Elgin, IL

June 4, 2025 - Six U-46 students who earned first place in the Illinois Science Olympiad were recognized by the Board of Education Monday with “Accent on Achievement” certificates.

U-46 had teams from Eastview Middle School, Larsen Middle School, and Elgin High School travel to the campus of the University of Illinois in April to compete in the Illinois Science Olympiad’s State Tournament. Science Olympiad is an enrichment program offered before- or after-school that covers all areas of STEM. Students work with each other to learn, explore and build in the areas that they choose to study. 

This was the 1t1h year that U-46 had schools compete in the Science Olympiad.

A team from Elgin High School, Pratyush Ramesh, who graduated last month, and Abhinav Arvind, who will be a junior in the fall, finished in first place in the anatomy and physiology category. 

Also from EHS, Aarav Patel and Mahitha Ratakonda, who both graduated last month, finished in first place in the disease detectives category, which involved epidemiology case studies.

“A big shout out to our sponsors and the club for (providing) such a wonderful experience. It was really nice being in Science Olympiad,”  Mahitha said. 

The EHS coaches were science teachers LeRoy Reinke and Victoria Griffin.

A team from Eastview Middle School, Jacob Baca and Melia Ortiz-Tan, who will be eight graders in the fall, earned first place in the remote sensing trial event. It involved using imagery, data, and maps to complete tasks related to earth system processes. Their coach was science teacher Heather Flick. 

“We studied — we only had three weeks to do it. We had no knowledge on it, but we studied a lot and got first place,” Jacob said.