This past Saturday evening, the Mayfield Science Olympiad team’s bus ride home from the Case Western Reserve University was filled with ecstatic laughter, the loud clinking of medals, and shouts of pride.

“We’re going to states!”

After a long period of dedication and hard work since the last Mentor Invitational, the team proudly placed sixth overall at the CWRU Regional competition on Feb. 21, and secured their position as the fourth team to qualify for the State competition, just behind Chardon High School.

Many stellar individual awards contributed to team’s total placing. Three first-place medals were earned in Fossils, Dynamic Planet, and Mission Possible, three second-place medals in Experimental Design, Protein Modeling, and Forensics, and three third-place medals in Bridge Building, Geologic Mapping, and Mission Possible (by Team 2), adding up to nine medals and two additional recognitions for fourth place in Anatomy, and a fifth place in Disease Detectives.

After learning of the team’s high quality performance, Jeffery Moegling, the chairman of the Science Department, sent an excited congratulatory email to the team. “You deserve all of the awards and recognition you have earned thus far and we look forward to seeing you succeed at states too!” he wrote with pride.

Their state qualification marks another remarkable achievement as well—this is the 10^th consecutive year that Mayfield has qualified for states. Competing against nationally renowned teams such as Solon and Mentor, the Northeast Ohio Region is known to be one of the toughest regionals in the nation. Yet Mayfield has confidently and proudly marked its spot among the highly competitive top teams in the region.

With an entire month to prepare for states, Corey Rice, the team’s co-coach, revealed the general plan for the future.  He said, “I’m very impressed by this particular pool of Science Olympiad. Top ten is a possibility, which is achievable as long as we continue the effort. We’re going to make sure we document the engineering, and keep up with our study events.”

Many tasks remain for the students to improve their machines and build on their current knowledge of the events, especially in preparation for the far larger states competition, which hosts around 50 teams—twice the number of teams at regionals. “Hopefully we won’t fall asleep for a couple weeks then come back,” Mr. Rice added with a laugh.

The middle school’s Division B also advances to the state competition this year. Together, the Mayfield teams will travel to Columbus on Friday, Apr. 10 to compete at the state competition that weekend at The Ohio State University, to once again show their hard-work and love for science and engineering.