Competition? You bet Magnet students competed. On March 2, 2019, many Academic Magnet High School students competed in the Quest competition at Trident Technical College. Students could compete in areas such as Math, Science, Social Studies, and more against other high schools in Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties. While the competition was certainly fierce, Academic Magnet students came away with some of the top prizes in the competition.

AMHS won first place overall in the Level III part of the competition. This overall first place win was because of the subject categories which many AMHS students won top prizes in. AMHS students Vansh Nagpal and Ethan Ouelette won first place in Level III Mathematics and AMHS students Jennifer Lee, Shreyas Mytri, and Preston Sessoms won third place in the Level III Mathematics competition. Ansel Dietrich, Miles Turk, and Timothy Wilson also won third place for Level III Science. For the Social Studies category, Josh Moore, McKenna Ronchetto, and Liam Wood came away with a second place win and AMHS students Sophia Butcher, Amelia Butcher, and Amelia Kitchens won third place. All of these AMHS wins contributed to the overall first place finish for AMHS in Level III and allowed us to take home another fancy trophy.

When I asked him about how he felt during the competition, Ethan Ouelette, who was part of Magnet’s first place Level III Mathematics team, explained, “I did the final round with Vansh because our other teammate, Lily Lassiter, had to leave after the written test. I was nervous because we were playing against another Magnet team and a Wando team, but we started off pretty strong which made me relax a lot.” Shreyas Mytri, a member of the third place Level III Mathematics team, commented, “We were pretty confident on the written test, but there were a couple that we weren’t sure about if we got right. Afterwards, we checked with some of the other groups and felt like we did alright.”

“We knew we won the math part of the competition immediately, and that was pretty exciting,” Ethan added. “Then when they started announcing the Level III winners, there were a lot of Magnet teams winning so I felt pretty good about Magnet being able to win Level III. It was a pretty cool experience because I won with Moultrie back in 6th grade, and I haven’t won since then. It was pretty fun.”

In addition to all of the Level III wins, James Staubes, Ashley Fister, and Shreyon Roy won first place in the Level IV Mathematics part of the competition.

There were also special competitions which did not contribute to AMHS’s overall standing, but many Academic Magnet students won awards in these special competition categories as well. For the computer programming competition, Alex Huang, Kyle Smith, and Manning Unger won first place. For Spanish 1, Sarah Nelson won first place and Anyjah Sally won second place. Keiry Mora Garcia also won first place in the Spanish 2 competition.

Congratulations to all AMHS students who were recognized in the Quest competition!