By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
MILLINGTON — Millington Community Schools students Lucinda Hall and Emma Trickey-Wazny are heading to Michigan State University today in search of a state championship — not in a relay race or volleyball match, but in the “Crime Busters” event of the Michigan Science Olympiad.
Actually, Hall, Trickey-Wazny and 13 other teammates on Millington’s Science Olympiad squad hope to win an overall state championship in Division B — the middle-school division for students from fifth through ninth grades.
Last year at the state tournament, Hall and Trickey-Wazny took third place in “Crime Busters,” which teaches students to identify the perpetrators of a crime or crimes by using paper chromatography and analysis of unknown solids, liquids and plastics found at a crime scene.
In March, Millington’s Division B team won its regional title, defeating opponents from a six-county area that included larger schools from Saginaw, Bay and Midland counties. Michigan Science Olympiad resembles an academic track meet, with students competing in 23 team events. Teams consist of 15 students who cross-train for a variety of events in their skill set.
“We have a lot of bigger cities that we’re competing against,” said Elizibeth McVay, 15, a Millington High freshman on the Science Olympiad team.
“I’m quite impressed by what we did at the regional tournament,” McVay said. “Most of the other teams have one kid per event. A lot of our team’s kids compete in two to three events, and other teams get a lot more money from their schools, too.”
Millington High freshman Tony Lowder Jr., 14, competed at six events at the regional tournament. He and his sister, Samantha, took first place in the “Rocks and Minerals” category, which asks students to show knowledge of rocks and minerals.
Tony Lowder Jr. and Weslee Vollweiler, 12, a Millington seventh-grader, took first in the regional in the “Boomilever” category, which requires students to build a cantilevered wooden structure.
Millington Science Olympiad team head coach Jennifer Mietz, a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher, said her squad won the regional tourney this year after taking second place for the past two years.
“We’re a small school, but we have some dedicated kids,” Mietz said.
The squad is better, too, because of numerous volunteer assistant coaches, Hall said. Mietz’s husband, electrical engineer Tyler Mietz, serves as assistant coach in the “Shock Value” event, where teams vie to show a basic understanding of electricity, magnetism and simple electrical devices. Tyler Mietz also is an assistant coach in the “Robo-Cross” event, which teaches teams to design and build a robot capable of performing certain tasks on a prescribed playing field.
Jennifer Mietz’s mother-in-law, environmental engineer Renee Mietz, is an assistant coach in several categories, and uses college textbooks to help prepare students.
“There are maybe only four pages on glaciers in the high-school textbook, and the glaciers (Science Olympiad judges) want you to look at are global — it’s not just the glaciers of North America,” said Renee Mietz, who coaches in the “Dynamic Planet” category asking students to answer earth-science questions.
Team member Hall said she “wouldn’t be anywhere without our coaches because they know what to teach us and they gather the materials for us to use, and they spend their own time helping us — they’re all volunteers.”
Tony Lowder Jr.’s father, Tony Lowder, coached team members in the Boomilever event. Melanie Lowder, Tony Lowder Jr.’s mother, coached in several events as well.
Roger E. Bearss II, Millington Junior/Senior High School principal, is “very supportive” of the Science Olympiad squad, said Corey Trickey, whose daughter, Emma Trickey-Wazny, competes on the Millington team. Trickey coaches the “Water Quality” and “Simple Machines” events.
Millington’s Science Olympiad program is “getting bigger and bigger, and it’s not just the parents anymore — the teachers are starting to get involved,” Trickey said.
Participation on the Science Olympiad squad also can prod students to start thinking about careers.
“It pushed me toward what I want to do after school,” Hall said. “I wanted to have a career in the sciences — I knew that — but it pushed me toward heredity. I started studying heredity and I realized how much I liked it. I probably would have been a forensic scientist without the Science Olympiad.”