On March 5th, the Rochester Mayo Science Olympiad team (SciOly) took off to State Finals at Bethel University for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, taking home a very respectable 11th place. For individual events, they took 3rd place in Astronomy, Experimental Design, WIFI Lab, and Wright Stuff. Aaron Larson, a Mayo High School physics teacher and Science Olympiad coach said, ”This year the team did a great job for how young we were; COVID-19 really dented our squad.” With an almost completely new team, they gave it their all and had a blast in the process.

Since this was their first year in person since COVID-19 struck, the team started out the season unorganized and scrambling to find a groove where they could work efficiently. Eventually they did and were able to finish the season strong. 

The team had expected this season to be focused on a “rebuild” and practice for next year. Fully expecting this, they did their best under the conditions with which they were presented. In fact, they managed to medal in various events. “For next year, the goal is to place in the top three teams at State with the penultimate aim of advancing to nationals,” Rochester Mayo Junior, Marc Zoghby stated. 

Over the course of the season, Marc Zoghby, one of Rochester Mayo’s SciOly captains for the 21-22 season, put in a massive effort to help rebuild the team. Zoghby joined SciOly during his sophomore year of high school, while the team was online. For their online season they had a total of 10 members; however, Zoghby wanted to expand and grow membership, so he became one of the team captains to do just that. This year he succeeded in getting the team into a groove and built a proper foundation to start from for next year’s season. 

Another SciOly member, Rochester Mayo Freshman Rohil Patel has been competing on the team for four consecutive years. Patel and his partner focused on medaling in the “anatomy” event. They ended up placing 4th, which was very respectable due to the amount of competition they had to face. Right now Patel is focusing on learning as much as he possibly can, but he plans to enter a career field related to science, biology, or medicine.

Over a long year losing tournaments to Lakeville in a multitude of different activities, Rochester Mayo was ecstatic that they dominated both Lakeville North and South (they placed 17th and 18th at State Finals). Unfortunately the same was not to be said about losing to Century High School (placed 10th). However, next year they plan to blow Century out of the water and dominate the competition.