Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Last Saturday at the Delaware Science Olympiad Award ceremony, Middle School Division, we learned that our Tri-State Homeschool Team took fifth place in the state of Delaware. We looked at all the medals our kids took, every child with a medal, and wondered what on earth had happened, and inside and confiding to each other, that we must have really screwed up an event to not finish higher. Fifth; huh, what happened? We had more medals then the other teams around us, and could only explain it by wondering how poorly we had done on the 6 events our kids hadn’t medaled in.

By Monday morning we finally saw the score sheets and our coach quickly contacted the organizer. Seems one of our numbers had an extra zero, turning a 4th place finish into a 40th place. This little extra zero, and 36 extra points to our score where low-score wins, is what had done it all. Once corrected the standings were changed; we had finished THIRD in the state, with a team composed of ten new kids, mostly 6th and 7th graders going up against teams comprised of ten 8th graders and five 9th graders. Experienced kids and our young kids had done great and were just a few points shy of coming in second in the state.

The final standings were:

HB Dupont 1st

Newark Charter 2nd

Tri-State Homeschool 3rd

Independence 4th

HBDupont, second team, 5th

It would have been so nice to know it that evening, and be able to pick-up that Third Place Trophy then. Oh well. It was really nice to see MK with three medals and a First place medal. His speed skating coach told me today that MK really lit up when he was telling him about the competition and his medals. Proud of his accomplishments. He should be, and so should his team.