LEHMAN TWP. — Calm and cool, Jeremy Harman and Michael Abromovage lounged in the lower floor of the Bell Center for Technology at the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus Wednesday.
The pair of Wyoming Area sophomores waited for Harman to be called in for a 25-minute exercise in writing directions. He had to do it well enough for Abromovage to follow those directions to complete a figure.
If they did it well enough, they’d get a medal.
Both young men were part of the Northeast Regional Science Olympiad held Wednesday at the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus. They were among hundreds of students from high schools and middle schools who had an opportunity to show their prowess in a variety of science fields.
The competitors, their coaches, some parents and a smattering of equipment managers and team alternates came from all over the northern part of the state. Some got up at 4:30 a.m. to make the trek from as far away as Lehighton, Athens, Wyalusing and Jersey Shore. Others, like the youngsters from Lake-Lehman, could have walked to the PSU campus.
The campus was dotted with clusters of young people in team t-shirts like the powder blue of the Dallas High School team, purple for Wallenpaupack, gray for Pittston Area and black with an orange paw logo for Tunkhannock. Lake-Lehman students in bright pink also sported their trademark science pun on the back.
But the thing that drove all of them wasn’t the chance to wear a science team t-shirt, but rather a desire to compete in high-level science competition.
The top eight teams from Wednesday’s event will go on to the state competition at Juniata College in April.
Team members from Wyoming Area are already packing their bags for the trip.
“Wyoming Area goes to states every year,” Harman said proudly.
Competition came in a variety of forms. There were computer-based tests in anatomy and physiology, fast facts and food science, identifying rocks and minerals and a meteorology. Then there were the hands-on competitions like electric vehicles and helicopters that students constructed and demonstrated for speed and endurance.
There was a “tower” competition where the students tested strength of their small wooden structures and a bottle-rocket competition on the PSU tennis courts. And a relatively new category, hydrogeology, had competitors tracing the path of some form of contamination through a water system.
That’s where Wyoming Area senior, Kara Dooner, said she liked to work.
“It’s a new event,” she said. “I did it for the first time last year.”
She credited recent issues with Marcellus shale and fracking for generating studies in the field, admitting she never imagined working on a project with water contamination when she got started as a science Olympian.
“My ninth-grade science teacher, Mrs. Wall, invited me to join the team four years ago. They needed another person, and I might as well go with it. I really liked science,” she said “Now I know I really like competing, the competition itself. It’s really a challenge.”
And, as well as the competitors and their coaches, there were folks on hand to cheer them on. The prize winners this year were Nancy and Brian Ellis, of Pittston, supporting all three of their sons in the competition.
“I think the boys got the science gene from Brian,” Nancy Ellis said. “He’s an engineer.”
Son Michael, now a senior at Pittston Area, started with the Science Olympiad when he was a sixth-grader. His parents were in the PSU library watching his hovercraft in competition and encouraged him when he challenged the results of the race.
In the middle of the family, seventh-grader Evan, was in another building competing, and the youngest, Zach, now in seventh grade, was disappointed that he didn’t support an egg enough in his event and was out of the competition.
“You’re just starting,” Brian Ellis said. “You’ll get better at it.”
The annual event takes a proverbial village, said Rachel Olszewski, who works in the Strategie Communications Office at the campus.
“There are staff and volunteers who keep things running,” she said. “But it’s a great day, and the youngsters love to compete at this level.”
And for the “athletes” themselves, it’s a chance to put another accomplishment on their high school resume.
“It’s something for these kids to be proud of,” Nancy Ellis said. “There are so many ways for students to excel, not just in athletics, but in academics, too.”
