O.C. Teams Score High in Science Olympiad

Top science students from two Orange County schools won high marks Saturday in one of the nation’s premier competitions for budding young scientists.

Defending champion Troy High School of Fullerton took second place overall in the 12th annual National Science Olympiad, a daylong test of hands-on science held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

And El Rancho Middle School of Anaheim Hills, in its first appearance in the tournament, scored 12th in the junior high category, outpacing a California rival from Lodi.

The tournament drew about 2,000 young competitors from the United States and Canada, with 52 teams in each of the junior and senior levels.

Troy, a magnet school for science in the Fullerton Joint Union High School District, was appearing for the fourth straight year. Last year, Troy broke the tournament record with 410 points. This year the team scored 314 points, topped only by the 367 by Grand Haven Senior High of Michigan. The third-place team from Fort Collins, Colo., scored 276.

“We promise to be back next year,” said Dan Jundanian, co-coach of the 15-member Troy squad. “We were naturally always hoping to get first, but we’re a pretty young team. The team that beat us had seven seniors. We only had four. Next year, we think we can catch ‘em.”

Troy students captured first place in two legs of the competition.

In a bridge-building match, sophomores Jason Shih and Shane Markstrom crafted a balsa-wood span weighing 7.7 grams, or about a quarter of an ounce, that was capable of holding 45 pounds.

And in an event called It’s About Time, Markstrom and junior Matt Lee took top scores for their knowledge of such esoterica as the theory of relativity’s effect on time for their ability to build an accurate time-measuring pendulum.

El Rancho co-coach Jan Miller said his team was thrilled to place in the top quarter, with 194 points in its first try.

“We’re jumping for joy,” Miller said.

Like Troy, the middle school claimed two victories in individual events.

Michael Chen, an eighth-grader, and Clara Yoon, in seventh grade, won a competition called Road Scholar, which tested their skill decoding maps and working with compasses. In a science and fitness event, eighth-grader Michael Wang and ninth-grader Earl Dos Santos (an El Rancho graduate who now attends Canyon High School) were the winners.

The two teams are planning to return home Monday.

Times staff writer Tina Nguyen contributed to this report.