The Barrington High School Science Olympiad team won the state championship. Again. 

In fact, for the last 15 straight years, a team from Barrington High School has won the state Science Olympiad title. And with the state championship trophy comes an invitation to participate in the national championship. 

This year’s nationals will be held at the University of Nebraska in May. 

Rahul Yehiya is a senior at Barrington High School and one of the captains for this year’s Science Olympiad team. Rahul said Barrington’s streak of state championships is nice, but the team’s performances at top invitationals is a bit more important. The Barrington High School team finished fifth at the Brown Invitational this year and sixth at the Harvard Invitational. 

“I would say that although it’s nice to collect medals at a state competition, it doesn’t provide much of an advantage or any help to us…” Rahul said during an interview last week. “So when we go to the Brown Invitational, the Harvard Invitational and the MIT Invitational, because we’re going against the different schools from around the states, we get to see the really good teams and we get to see how we’re placing against them.”

Barrington will be going up against the best in the country when they travel to the University of Nebraska in May. Rahul and his Barrington teammates know they will face some very talented teams at nationals. Rahul said it is very difficult for high school teams like the one at Barrington High School to earn top-three finishes at the Science Olympiad National Championship.

“It’s nearly impossible, because you’re going against schools and you’re going against teams that have really strong funding, first of all, and second of all they have teachers and coaches who are paid” to teach subjects for Science Olympiad, Rahul said. 

Barrington’s funding is limited to the entrance fees for competitions. All other funding must be raised by the team members — residents may have spotted the Science Olympiad team members outside the Barrington Shaw’s Supermarket on Sunday. 

Despite the uphill battle Barrington High School will face at nationals, Rahul and his teammates are looking forward to the experience. 

“I’m excited to go to nationals,” said Barrington High School senior Athena Gao, who will participate in four events at nationals — Helicopter, Code Busters, Anatomy and Physiology, and Ecology.

“Code Buster has been my strongest one,” Athena said. “I can usually get the time bonus down. I can usually get a decent number of codes down. It just relies on how my partners do. I’ve been doing it since middle school and we’ve been doing pretty well with Code Busters.”

Cole Kepner, a senior at Barrington High School, will participate in Bungee Drop, Helicopter, and Code Busters. He said his strongest event is Bungee Drop. 

“I just think that I’ve had really strong performance in competitions, really repeatable results, and that’s only going to get better with more practice,” Kepner said. 

Rahul will participate in four different events at the national Science Olympiad competition — Disease Detectives (he will partner with Iris Yang), Electric Vehicle, Write It Do It, and Air Trajectory. Rahul said Electric Vehicle is his best event. 

“I’ve been doing Electric Vehicle, well, this is the first year we have it as an event, but I’ve been doing build events since seventh grade,” he said. 

Rahul said there have been a handful of Barrington High School students who have medaled individually at nationals. He said there was one student who finished second in a couple of events.

Iris Yang is a junior at Barrington High School and a Science Olympiad team member. Yang will compete in Astronomy, Disease Detectives (with Rahul), Ecology, and Experimental Design. She said she is excited about going to nationals, and loves being a member of the BHS Science Olympiad team. 

“I really like the community here. With Science Olympiad, everyone’s doing their own individual events but you’re also on the same team, so you have people who like engineering, you have people who like biology, you have people who like physics. And if you all are able to come together and compete as a team, I think that’s really special and you can’t really find that in any other club,” she said. 

Kepner, who is also a member of the Barrington High School baseball team, agreed. 

“I think (Science Olympiad) is a different dynamic,” he said. “With baseball it’s really a massive team effort. Here, it’s a bit more individual, where you have your different events and you’re competing against other teams and partners. Your performance in those events does help the team’s score but the team environment is just social, it’s not competitive.”

Barrington High School teachers and Science Olympiad coaches Sabrina Cancel and Stephen Marshall said this year’s team the strongest in years. 

“I look forward to this trip,” said Cancel. “It’s awesome to see them, different grades but they all have that science love in common. You don’t see them forming little groups when we’re doing free time — they’re all together. I wake up at 2 in the morning to make sure they’re in their rooms and they’re all playing Uno. It’s really nice to see that community that they’ve formed.”