On Feb. 20, the coordinated Warrior Engineering team competed in the Capitol Area competition, which was sponsored by the Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering.

Several students placed in the various competitions, including:

Lucas Gretta ‘18 – 1st in Chemistry & 5th in PreCal

James Dong ‘19 – 1st in Geometry

Sameer Jain ‘19 – 2nd in Chemistry & 6th in Alg II

Kevin Li ‘18 – 2nd in Calculus

Jenny Zhang ‘19 – 3rd in Alg II & 6th in Biology

Catherine Li ‘18 – 4th in Calculus

Kush Desai ‘18 – 4th in Alg II

James Joh  ‘19 – 5th in Alg II

Joanna McDonald ‘18 – 5th in Chemistry

As 1st place winners, Gretta and Dong will advance to the state competition, held on April 30.

“I prepared for the competition by studying for the SAT subject test, and it used a lot of the same skills on both tests,” Gretta said.

During the competition, students take two 45-minute tests, one for each of the current math and science classes that they are enrolled in. There were a total of 300-400 middle and high school students who competed, with 15 students participating from Westwood.

In addition to the outstanding individual performances, the teams also had success in another task, named the Engineering Design Challenge, created by engineers at Boeing, an aircraft manufacturing company. The objective was to design and build a structure for a drone wing. They were judged based on the length of the wing, as well as the wing’s ability to suspend over a span of at least 20 inches. Li’s team won 3rd place, and several other teams were recognized with Judges’ Choice awards.

“Three Judges’ Awards were presented for other things, such as aesthetics, teamwork, and creativity,” said TAME sponsor Doug Landers.