Hinsdale Central HS Science Olympiad Team Takes Third in State

Hinsdale Township High School District 86 today congratulated the Hinsdale Central Science Olympiad team for its third place finish at State, the school’s best-ever performance at this event.

The state competition was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The team competed in 28 events and brought home a total of 12 medals. Overall the team finished in the top 10 in 22 of the 28 events, according to a press release issued by the district,

“This was an amazing season,” said Coach Kathleen Gabric. “This group of students worked together and supported each other from September through April. We had placed fourth the last three years in a row but had not been able to break that barrier.Through determination, teamwork and extra practices, this group did what no other previous Science Olympiad team had been able to do and took third at State.”

Gabric said much of the team will be graduating this year, so new students will be able to take the reigns of the team in the future.

“Next year will be a rebuilding year. We are losing a very strong senior base, but the determination to succeed next year can already be seen in our upcoming student leadership,” she said.

First place medals were awarded to Priya Pillai and Brandon Weller in Green Generation; Brandon Weller and Julia Clarke in Fossils; Kiril Kolev and Navid Shoaee in Hydrogeology.

Priya Pillai and Anisha Nallakrishna finished second in Technical Problem Solving.

Third place medal winners are Sophie Lekas and Julia Clarke in Dynamic Planet; Sanjana Srinivasan and Peter Ren in Forensics; and Ellen Jiang and Sophie Lekas in Write It Do It.

Fifth place finishes were awarded to Ellen Jiang and Ankush Bajaj in Cell Biology; Sophie Lekas and Megan Guenther in GeoMapping; Sanjana Srinivasan, Peter Ren, and Shahzar Rizvi in Protein Modeling; and Arnav Sankaran and Cecilia Ding in Invasive Species.

Team members include: Priya Pillai (president), Nathalie Phillips & Satya Krishnan (building captains), Kislay Bhagat (physics captain), Brandon Weller (biology captain), Sophie Lekas (earth science captain), Navid Shoaee (chem co-captain), Anisha Nallakrishnan (inquiry captain), Ankush Bajaj, Ellen Jiang, Sanjana Srinivasan, Megan Guenther, Julia Clarke, Peter Ren, Peyton Pielet, Shahzar Rizvi, Tina Guo, Qianfan Song, Kiril Kolev, Arnav Sankaran, and Cecilia Ding.

Team coaches include James Paige, Peter Pintz, Jim Ludois, Jon Schmidt, and head coach Kathleen Gabric.