The Science Olympiad team will compete at the Northridge Invitational on Jan. 19 at Northridge High School, according to Michael Lu, club officer and senior.

The Northridge Invitational is an annual competition in Middlebury. The team plans on attending this competition as a “practice tournament” since invitationals have no impact on a team’s regional or state rankings. Lu said he believes that competing in invitationals gives less experienced team members a chance to gain experience and improve their skills.

“We’re taking this as another opportunity to allow newer members to get a feel for how competitions work and to gauge our competition for the rest of the year,” Lu said.

This invitational is exclusive to high school teams in the B and C Divisions. Divisions are split into grade levels rather than rank. CHS will compete in Division C, which is the highest level of competition and pertains to high school students. To qualify for the National competition, teams in Division C must win their state competition.

The Division C competition season begins in early March. The Science Olympiad team is undergoing tests to determine which members will attend competitions.

“We will hold many rounds of testing, and whoever has the best overall scores throughout the entire testing process will be placed on the team we take to State and possibly Nationals,” Lu said.

This year the Science Olympiad Division C Nationals will be held at Wright State University in Ohio. Science Olympiad co-sponsor Drew Grimes said he would like for the team to qualify for the Wright State Invitational, but there is fierce competition among fellow Hoosiers.

“If you win your state you get to go to Nationals. That’s a big ‘if’ for our team,” Grimes said.