Once again the Gunnison High School (GHS) Science Olympiad team has qualified for state after a successful day at regionals despite their unusually small team. On February 18th, 2023 the GHS Science Olympiad team traveled to Pueblo’s Colorado State University campus to compete at regionals against schools of every size from 1A to 5A. At the end of the day GHS placed 6th overall with some students medaling. These students include Julian Ryter, Spencer Hays, Jemma Petrie, Udev VIjay, and Johnathon Roberts who all placed in the top three in their respective events. 

To prepare for state, the team will continue to contribute a required 90 minutes of work each week at school with the help of their coach Maria Kattnig. If they choose to, they can also put in extra work out of school and if they ever need assistance in one of their events they can meet with Ms. Kattnig before or after school on the early release on Wednesday. The Science Olympiad team usually has around 15 members who pick up on average two events each. Unlike most years in the past there has been a lack of members with only 11 participants on the team. This shortage in members has caused some participants  to compete in up to five events, from the possible 23 to choose from One of these students is Julian Ryter who participated in Scrambler, an event where competitors build a car to hold an egg and make sure it doesn’t break while the car shakes, Code Busters in which they solve ciphers to find out the hidden phrase, Trajectory where they build a small launcher to throw a object that can range from a tennis ball to a hacky sack, Experimental Design where the participant has to design, conduct, and report a finding on a experiment, and Write It Do It where one of the participants writes a detailed description and how to build an object and their teammate has to build it using their instructions. 

Julian enjoys participating in the Science Olympiad and has proved his proficiency, placing top 10 in all of his events and bringing home two first place medals as well. Although Julian believes that his team has done very well this year he also wishes more people would take interest in it and join the team.