Science Team Cracks State Top 10

Geneva High School Principal Tom Rogers has accompanied the school’s Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Competition team to the state finals at the University of Illinois every year since he took the helm. This year’s team, he commented, was a little different than previous contenders.

“Usually the students come down to breakfast still cramming for the competition, studying their chemistry and their engineering graphics and other things I frankly can’t begin to understand,” Rogers noted at Monday’s Board of Education meeting. “This group didn’t cram, and they didn’t worry. They just ate breakfast, played the same game on the bus ride to the competition that they played all the way down the day before, then went into the competition and placed seventh in the state.”

The 14 members of the WYSE team received Tradition of Excellence awards Monday. Their seventh-place finish was the second-best in the history of Geneva High School, surpassed only by a fifth-place finish several years ago, Rogers said. Geneva’s team competes in the division for the largest high schools, putting it up against powerhouse schools like New Trier East and West.

Team members honored include Ryan Ahern, James Bartusek, Bradley Bernhard, Patrick Boduch, Blair Dunbar, Grant Fairchild, Molly Griffin, Keane Hensley, Joshua Kilmer, Jordan Otto, John Schrilla, William Stith, Collin Waldoch and Christopher Warren.

Kilmer also placed fifth in the individual computer science contest and sixth in the engineering graphics contest, while Ahern and Schrilla placed fifth and sixth, respectively, in chemistry.

Rogers also praised the team’s comportment at the state finals.

“It’s so nice to be able to go out with such nice, polite students who represent our school so well,” he said. “This is the most incredibly brilliant group of young people.”