St. Anthony WYSE Team Wins Sectional

Congratulations go out to the St. Anthony WYSE Team, which captured 1st place at the Sectional held at Eastern Illinois University on Thursday in the 300 Division.

WYSE is an acronym for Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering.

The Academic Challenge is a competitive series of tests created and administered by Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering and offered to high school students in Illinois and Missouri. The tests are now offered by more than 50 community colleges and universities and are designed to present a challenge to the brightest students.

Test material is drawn from senior high school and freshman level college curricula. Written by teams of college and university faculty, subjects include biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering graphics, English, mathematics, and physics. Each test production team produces three tests of increasing levels of difficulty, regional, sectional and state finals. Students compete as individuals and as part of a team (when their school fields a team); they have 40 minutes to complete multiple-choice tests that range in length from 30 questions (computer science) to 100 questions (English).

Joy Jones and Matthew Poston are the team coaches.

Team Members are Alex Curl, Laura Deters (3rd place tie for Chemistry), John Goeckner (1st place in Math & 2nd place tie in Physics), Benton Hakman, Frank Jansen (2nd place tie in Physics & 3rd place in Math), Madeline McDevitt, Maggie Mumm (1st place in Biology & 1st place in Chemistry), Megan Nuxoll, Scott Rentfrow (1st place in Physics & 2nd place in Math), Kate Richards, John Sandschafer (3rd place tie for Chemistry), Lauren Schmidt (2nd place tie for Physics), Emily Wortman and Sarah Wortman.

In addition to winning 1st place as a team, the following students also earned scholarship money for their performance at the sectional ($1500 per year for 4 years for all students who choose to attend EIU): Maggie Mumm, Scott Rentfrow and John Goeckner.

The squad will next head to State competition to be held at the University of Illinois.