After 16 years on top, Harriton’s Science Olympiad team has been defeated. The news comes after it had originally been reported that Harriton had won the State Tournament by a mere 1 point, which would have made it the closest state finish in Harriton’s history. Sadly, three days later, the team learned that, “the information sent out on Saturday was missing scores for Scrambler and the Bungee event was listed incorrectly,” as the Science Olympiad website notes. Due to the information above being entered incorrectly into score-tabulating spreadsheets, Harriton was originally projected to be the overall winner of the competition. In reality thouh, Penncrest High School had really beaten Harriton by nine points. Over the past 16 years, Harriton has broken records, won two national titles (2001, 2005) and secured the title for having the longest championship streak in a Pennsylvania activity or sport. Harriton placed in 14 out of 23 events, while Penncrest placed in 16 events.

Last year, Harriton blew out the competition at States by a margin of 67 points, taking second place at Nationals. More recently, however, Harriton placed second at the Regional Competition. Even with the loss to Conestoga at Regionals, the team still believed they could win states, as they had come back and done so 4 times before (2007- 2010). Harriton still holds the claim to the most top ten finishes at Nationals, making top ten finishes in the past 20 years. Harriton has placed gold in the events astronomy, Boomilever, compound machines, mission impossible and scrambler.

The first signs of trouble regarding scoring came at midday Monday, May 5th, when results were released showing that Penncrest had beaten Harriton by 1 point. The results were quickly retracted due to missing scores for an event. PA Science Olympiad’s website stated yesterday, “The scorers are double checking all of the scores after finding one irregularity in one event’s scores. This complete double check will take another day. We will update this webpages with scores (and or any changes in ranking) as soon as possible.” Now it states, “We apologize to coaches and students for any confusion caused by the issue.”

Without counting these scores, Penncrest would win, though with them, Harriton would win by one point. At 5:17 PM after school, a team meeting was called in Mr. Guavins room, during which the team co captions announced that Harriton would have to send back its trophy. A somber silence fell over the room. Co-captain Alex Herriot stated, “It’s a real shame that what happened had to happen and that for this competition we found out so late after the actual competition that we lost first place. However, what does not change is us as a team and how we are able to perform at Nationals.” Harry Smith, another co-captain, added, “[The team feels] pretty rough, but we have more motivation to do well later.”

Everyone was surprised, but directly after the meeting ended, students got right back to work, working harder then ever to ensure every bit of their final 8 days before Nationals would be spent preparing to make sure there would not be a repeat of Regionals and States. The team wants to show that once again, Harriton Science Olympiad has what it takes to be national champions.

The team has no time to grieve after their loss; they have to push forward over the next 7 days so they can bring home the big trophy to Harriton. The State Competition’s outcome truly goes to show what resilience, dedication and love for competition Harriton Science Olympiad embodies. As sophomore Chris Fulton puts it, “I am feeling slightly disappointed that we got second, but I know that going to Nationals we are going to make sure things aren’t second and we are going to shoot for first.”

Note: a) Ricky Sayer is a member of the Science Olympiad team.

b) The article previously stated that the mistake was an anatomy event being incorrectly scored, however the event was actually one called Bungee Drop. The article has been edited to reflect this.