A Reboot of Central’s Science Olympiad Team

Though the Montana Science Olympiad competition will not be held until early March next year, Billings Central Catholic High School’s team has already begun to prepare. Science Olympiad is an annual STEM competition held at hundreds of locations across the United States. Students from Central will have the opportunity to compete in a 14 different events ranging from Anatomy and Physiology to Astronomy.

Central’s team is currently undergoing a change in leadership. English teacher Nick Mack and math teacher Dusty Reno are both in their first year teaching at BCCHS and have agreed to coach the team. Science Olympiad offers a unique challenge for coaches, as it requires students to independently learn and practice for their events. “Mr. Reno and I are kind of there just to guide people…that’s why we really need self-motivated students,” said Mack.

Because of the self-directed nature of Science Olympiad, Mack and Reno only plan on meeting about once a month to check in with their students and make sure they have the resources they need to succeed. Still, Mack says that he wants to focus on making sure that his students are prepared. “When I was in high school, I did my whole project the night before we left for Science Olympiad,” he said. “I did well, but I could have done even better if I would have prepared more.”

Mack hopes that he will be able to use this year to grow the Science Olympiad team. “I’m just trying to make it as fun as possible for the students so that we get a bigger team, because the bigger the team we have, the more chances we have to win this thing and move on,” said Mack. Currently, there is only a varsity team, as there are not enough interested students to form two teams.

Mack thinks that Science Olympiad serves to prepare students for life past high school. “It’s taking the ideas that you learned in school and applying them to real life situations,” he said. Many of Science Olympiad’s events involve interesting engineering challenges like constructing a bridge or an aircraft. “You get to take all the theory you learn in class and actually apply it to something more,” said Mack.

Though the team is small, Mack expects great things from his students this year. “I expect to win the whole thing,” said Mack. “We’re going to nationals.”