Career Tech students notch 3rd win, prepare for national contests

ANCHORAGE — After months of training and working toward record achievements in the nation’s most competitive science contests, Mat-Su Career and Technical High School students sealed their fate with an overall win in the State Science Olympiad competition at the University of Alaska March 28.

“It’s a little bit of a relief,” said Career and Tech Science Olympiad coach Tim Lundt, of the win.

Lundt said a lot of schools represented at the state meet hadn’t attended local Career and Tech invitationals this year, so they weren’t sure how good their competition was going to be.

Colony High School teams claimed four wins in the Astronomy, Chemistry Lab, Entomology and “Scrambler” events and Eagle River High School took first in the Fossils, “Mission Impossible” and Technical Problem Solving events, but they were no match for Career Tech.

Of 10 teams at the state competition, four consisted of Career Tech students.

Members of Career Tech’s A team took the gold in 14 of the 23 events, silver in seven events, bronze in “Technical Problem Solving” and fifth place in “Mission Impossible.” Members of the B team also claimed wins in “Forensics” and “Green Generation” and placed fourth overall.

“That’s the most we’ve ever won,” Lundt said.

This marks Career Tech’s fourth Science Olympiad win, but it adds to something much bigger. Winning the competition capped Career Tech’s achievement of the state science “trifecta,” made up of regional competitions for the National Science Bowl, National Ocean Sciences Bowl and National Science Olympiad.

According to Lundt, winning all three events in the same year and attending the national competitions for each is a feat only accomplished by a handful of schools across the country. No team from Alaska has placed in the top 30 at a national science event since Chugiak High School did in the early 2000s, he said.

“We’ve done our work and now let’s not just settle on winning in Alaska … let’s go ahead and make Alaska look good at nationals,” Lundt said.

That’s exactly what senior Ariel Hasse, sophomore Luke Arthur and freshman Jacob Cucinello intend to do.

Hasse, Arthur and Cucinello are the only Career Tech students on the winning teams for all three events this year. Each of them has an extensive background in the sciences.

Hasse, who has been involved in Science Olympiad at the high school level for the past three years, said she missed one third of her classes last year, mainly to participate in extracurricular science events.

And she still passed all four of her Advanced Placement exams.

While class time is important, Hasse said, her experience in the science bowls and Science O “have been absolutely invaluable” in developing herself as a person and her academic interests.

At Science O this year, Hasse placed first in Disease Detectives with Sarah Montalbano; first in experimental design with Ashton Lund and Ryan Kavalok; second in Chem Lab with Kailey Carlson; second in Green Generation with Courtney Monroe; and first in Compound Machines with Arthur.

Arthur also worked with Cucinello to take first in Dynamic Planet, second in Astronomy and third in Technical Problem Solving.

Cucinello also won “It’s About Time” and Bungee Drop with Neal Alcina.

Arthur wasn’t surprised Career Tech did so well.

“You ask your teammates, ‘how did you do on that (event)’ and you can start to kind of put it together and figure out roughly how you’re doing” throughout the competition, he said.

But Career Tech might not be as much of a shoe-in with a bigger playing field.

“I really wish that other schools around the state could also have the same science support and interest and inspiration that we have, because I would like to see there be more competition every year,” Hasse said. “We won by over 50 points this year, and that’s awesome, and I’m really proud of us for that, but I think it would have been more empowering for other schools and students to also have done so well.”

Lundt agreed that Alaska needs more science competitions in schools. Finding coaches, he said, is both the starting point and the biggest challenge.

Between the time commitment and the lack of funding for Science Technology Engineering and Math programs like Science Olympiad, Lundt said, “there’s no incentive for the teachers to do it.”

But for Career and Tech students and Teeland Middle School students — who placed teams in first and fourth out of 20 middle school teams this past weekend — the investment seems to have paid off.

Hasse, Arthur and Cucinello will travel to the National Ocean Sciences Bowl in Mississippi April 23-26; the general National Science Bowl April 30-May 4 in Washington, D.C.; and the National Science Olympiad competition in Nebraska May 15-16.

Ocean Sciences Bowl team captain Josh Hartman will accompany the trio to the first two competitions, and 12 other Career and Tech students will join them at Science Olympiad.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.