Yesterday the 2006 Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad took place at Forsythe Middle School in Ann Arbor. There were 1300 students competing from 16 schools including 15 in Ann Arbor and Estabrook in Ypsilanti. There students from 2nd to 5th grades. Estabrook only had 5th graders competing. We have been practicing since January. I coached the team competing in the Write It, Build It event. The Estabrook team worked extremely hard and although we didn’t win any single event outright, we did well in most events, including 2nd in Straw Tower, 3rd in Name that Scientist and 4th in Write It, Build It. Our team had no result worse than 10th. As a result the Estabrook team came in third overall among all the schools. More importantly, the supervisors of each event voted on which team showed the best combination of politeness, conduct during events and behavior toward others and teammates. Estabrook won the sportsmanship award for 5th grade. Today there was an article in the Ann Arbor News and they had a picture of one the kids I coached Destiny Mack. I put up a bunch of pictures here.

Congratulations to all the kids who worked so hard to prepare and learned so much new stuff, to head coach Lisa Lava-Kellar and to all the parents who volunteered to coach the teams!