Skyridge students win state science championship

The Skyridge Middle School Science Olympiad team made Camas history last month when it became the city’s first middle school team to win the state Science Olympiad championship.

Now, the group of 16 middle-schoolers are headed to Nebraska to compete against some of the nation’s best STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students at the 2025 Science Olympiad National Tournament May 23-24 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“I’m excited to stay in the dorms,” said Skyridge Science Olympiad team member Daniel Liu. “And I’ve heard the guest speakers are really inspirational.”

This year’s keynote speaker has not yet been announced, but the 2024 national Science Olympiad competition featured retired NASA astronaut and former Hudson’s Bay High School science teacher Dorothy “Dottie” Metcalf-Lindenburger.

Daniel, 13, an eighth-grader at Skyridge, and his Science Olympiad teammates took first place in six events at placed in the top four in 18 out of 23 events at the state competition April 12 at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. The entire team — Team Aron, named after a Pokemon character — took first place at the state tournament. Team Aron beat two dozen Washington middle school teams, including two others from Camas: Skyridge’s Team Blissey and Liberty Middle School’s Team Black, which placed 13th and 15th in the state.

“It’s helped motivate me,” Daniel said, “and I’m constantly learning.”

At the state competition, Daniel placed first in two of his individual challenges, but said he has tempered his expectations for the national stage.

“I really don’t expect to win at that high level,” Daniel said, adding that he is simply excited to compete with some of the brightest middle school Science Olympiad teams in the country. That doesn’t mean that Daniel and the other Team Aron students aren’t immersing themselves in preparations for the national competition.

While the team used to practice for an hour after school and meet up at Camas High School for a couple hours twice a week, Jamie said, they are now practicing most weekdays and meeting at the high school several times a week.

The challenges some of the Camas students will face at the national event may be different than those they’ve already prepared for during the run-up to the state tournament.

Daniel, for example, discovered that the national competition schedule would knock out two of his three events, so he is now cramming to learn about entomology and wind power.