Launch the media gallery 1 playerState Science Olympiad Winners
April 15, 2021
Mason and Rutledge Bring Home First Place State Science Olympiad Medal
Congratulations to seventh graders Collin Mason and Kavinly Rutledge for earning first-place medals at
State Science Olympiad in their event, AgriBio. This is the highest ranking our school has received yet at
State!!! Science Olympiad is extremely competitive, with many of the same large schools taking home
the top honors year after year at both the junior high and high school level, so this is a truly phenomenal
accomplishment on their part. While no one else on the team medaled at state this year, the junior high
team itself as a whole placed right at the top half of all schools with their total overall points, which we
are beyond thrilled about. This is especially significant because Science Olympiad is unique in that it
places all schools in the state together, regardless of their school size or public versus private status, so
it is truly wonderful that our school could achieve this feat, especially given the fact that we are often
the smallest school in the state to compete, and this year does not appear to be much different. Two
other events, Heredity (Gage Iddings and Kelsey Crabtree) and Crime Busters (Kelsey Crabtree and Kierre
de Jong) also did very, very well and each earned a top-ten spot.
Our high school team did not have any state medalists this year; however, I am still incredibly pleased
with them too. This is the first time the high school team as a whole even earned the right to compete at
state, and given the extreme difficulty of state level testing and the learning curves associated with that,
I am just happy that we placed higher than several other schools and did not come in at the bottom of
the list, as one might normally have realistically expected a new team like our’s to do for their first time.
The high school team’s best event scores were in Designer Genes (Jaden Gannan and Ryelin Hulet) and
Protein Modeling (Lillian Carter and Courtney Caraway). Both teams look forward to growing in the
years to come and earning the opportunity to compete again at this level going forward. I am so proud
of all of our students and believe they represented our school well. Way to go Panthers!
Here are the awards links, for anyone who is interested in watching them. This is also a good time to
mention that some of the events that our students practiced and diligently studied for, and then even
competed in that day, at both the Junior High and High School level, were unfortunately dropped due to
virtual testing issues associated with them, so student rankings within them are unknown, which is why
they do not appear within the slide shows. The good news with that is though, all plans for next year at
both the regional and district level are for on-ground/in-person competitions to thankfully resume again
next year, so there is that silver lining!
Junior High Science Olympiad Results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWLqZ-n1qv0
High School Science Olympiad Results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOVbeGRJolM
