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Beyond the Byline: A day late and a dollar short

<p>LEHMAN TWP. &#8212; Students in hoodies and T-shirts, a packed gymnasium, a library full of people.</p><p>It&#8217;s a normal state of affairs for Penn State&#8217;s Wilkes-Barre campus. Except that Wednesday, the students were a lot younger than the usual crowd. And very few normally on campus do their schoolwork hoping to get a medal at the end of the day.</p><p>Penn State Wilkes-Barre hosted the Northeast Regional Science Olympiad on Wednesday with hundreds of students from high schools and middle schools showing off their prowess in a variety of scientific challenges.</p><p>The competitors, their coaches, some parents and a smattering of equipment managers and team alternates came from all over the northern part of the state. Some got up at 4:30 a.m. to make the trek from as far away as Lehighton, Athens, Wyalusing and Jersey Shore. Others, like the youngsters from Lake-Lehman, could have walked to the school&#8217;s campus.</p><p>The campus was dotted with clusters of young people in team t-shirts such as the powder blue of the Dallas High School team, purple for Wallenpaupack, gray for Pittston Area and black with an orange paw logo for Tunkhannock. </p><p>But the thing that drove all of them wasn&#8217;t the chance to wear a science-team T-shirt, but rather a desire to compete in high-level science competition.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a fun competition. And you get to meet interesting people,&#8221; said Scott Field, a sophomore from Lake-Lehman High School. &#8220;And, yeah, it&#8217;s a day out of school. But we really have to work hard to get here, and there&#8217;s pressure to get the job done.&#8221;</p><p>Field and his teammate, Josh Orehotsky, put their hovercraft to the test in one of the day&#8217;s events. They took a break to watch the &#8220;Wright Stuff&#8221; competition &#8211; un-motorized aircrafts in timed flights &#8211; before heading for lunch then putting their robotic arm to the test later in the afternoon.</p><p>Field and Orehotsky were among the majority of the high schoolers who have been competing at this level for several years. Winners of the competition can go on to the state level with a chance to bring back a trophy for their school&#8217;s display case.</p><p>Competitions came in a variety of forms. There were computer-based tests in anatomy and physiology, fast facts and food science, identifying rocks and minerals and a meteorology. Then there were the hands-on competitions like electric vehicles and helicopters that students constructed and demonstrated for speed and endurance. There was a &#8220;tower&#8221; competition where the students tested strength of their small wooden structures and a bottle-rocket competition on the campus&#8217; tennis courts.</p><p>For &#8220;Write It, Do It,&#8221; one partner wrote out directions and the second team member had to construct a figure using those directions. And a relatively new category, hydrogeology, had competitors tracing the path of some form of contamination through a water system.</p><p>And as in any good competition, there are plenty of people to record what happens.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m here to support my teammates and get the video,&#8221; said Liliana Corredo, a ninth-grader from Dallas High School as she caught the hoverboard competition on her cell phone. &#8220;We support our own at the open events.&#8221;</p><p>She became a competitor last year because it &#8220;seemed like really fun,&#8221; and is back for a second year because she likes the challenge.</p><p>The top eight teams from Wednesday&#8217;s event will go on to the state competition at Juniata College in April.</p><p>Team members from Wyoming Area are already packing their bags for the trip.</p><p>&#8220;Wyoming Area makes it to states every year,&#8221; said sophomore Jeremy Harman, of Exeter.</p><p>He got started with the Science Olympiad in seventh grade because he &#8220;thought it would be interesting to try out&#8221; and found he liked the challenge.</p><p>&#8220;I really like math, and there&#8217;s a lot of math in what we do with this,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I just like the way it makes our brains work.&#8221;</p><p>Results of the competition were not available at press time.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Dawson Hughes and Brandon Karavitch compete in the Electric Vehicle Distance Challenge during the Science Olympiad at Penn State Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday. High schoolers and middle schoolers </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_TTL030917Science-Olympiad1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Dawson Hughes and Brandon Karavitch compete in the Electric Vehicle Distance Challenge during the Science Olympiad at Penn State Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday. High schoolers and middle schoolers </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_TTL030917Science-Olympiad2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Lauren Repella and Alexis Corbett, of Wilkes-Barre Academy, adjust the angle of the device used to propel a car carrying an egg at the Science Olympiad on Wednesday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web1_TTL030917Science-Olympiad2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Lauren Repella and Alexis Corbett, of Wilkes-Barre Academy, adjust the angle of the device used to propel a car carrying an egg at the Science Olympiad on Wednesday. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Gina Thackara</p><p>For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach the Times Leader newsroom at 570-829-7242 or on Twitter @TLnews.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Science Olympiad competitors invade Penn State Wilkes-Barre