Moses Lake youth qualify for state contest

MOSES LAKE — Two teams from Frontier Middle School are competing in a state Science Olympiad competition.

The teams qualified for state by excelling in Sunday’s regional competition, which took place in Spokane.

Frontier’s “Warrior Team” placed second and “Blue Team” placed fifth.

“They did fantastic and I’m looking forward to the next few weeks for how we can improve for state,” said advisor Jay Loutherback.

The students prepared for regionals with the help of four coaches, including Loutherback, Steve Gjefle, Shannon Downing and Tim Miller.

Students spent Monday in an after-school meeting to prepare for the big day, April 18.

Twin brothers and sixth grade students Zack and Joey Friedbauer, 12, both came home from regionals with recognition.

Zack received a third-place medal in the science crime busters category. Joey received a fourth-place ribbon in the experimental design category. It was the first time the students participated.

Although the brothers were not on the teams that qualified for state, Zack said he has a strong chance of being selected as an alternate.

For the science crime busters competition, Zack was given a set of three unknown powders and three liquids: Iodine, hydrochloride and water.

It was Zack’s task to figure out what the powders were by adding drops of the liquid to them and looking for reactions. His task also included figuring out what animal a piece of hair came from, and using the information to solve a mock crime.

For example, if Zack discovered a “victim” was found with cat hair on them, but they didn’t own a cat, he would use the information to find a perpetrator with cat hair on their clothing.

“We beat somebody whose been in there for three years, same event,” Zack said.

The experimental design portion of the competition challenged Joey to build a spring board using a variety of provided materials.

Paper clips, tacks, tape and a rubber band are some of the materials he had to work with.

The spring board was intended to launch a marble or another item.

Joey chose to launch a balloon with his spring board, made of a rubber band situated between two paper clips taped to the table.

He said he would have received higher placement if the device had been more accurate.

Zack and Joey plan to participate in Science Olympiad through middle school and high school. 

Joey said he is particularly excited about being able to participate in the robot building activities, generally only open to seventh and eighth grade students.

He said they have already acquired a surprising amount of knowledge about robot building.

“We could probably build a robot from scratch right now,” he said.

Samantha Hedrick, 13, and Russell Coulston, 14, also didn’t qualify this year for the state competition.

Hedrick said she was an alternate last year, and she hopes to become an alternate again.

Both said it was worth it to participate.

“It was fun,” Coulston said.

“Better than just sitting on your butt,” Hedrick added.