Harker’s Varsity C team was named “Best Overall” in the country by the Junior Engineering Technical Society’s (JETS) annual Test of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition. The team, made up of seniors Daniel Kim, Hanh Dang, Jeffrey Mandell, Tsung-Ju Lu, Nikita Sinha, Kartik Venkatraman, Kevin Wang and Kevin Xu, will receive a $5,000 cash prize and a trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
JETS is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to developing young people’s interest in engineering and technology. Each year, the organization holds its two-part TEAMS competition, in which students answer a series of questions dealing with different engineering scenarios. Every year, the competition has a different theme. This year’s theme explored the engineering principles used in theme parks.
Other Harker teams also performed well in the competition. At the national overall level, Harker’s Varsity D team (juniors Andy Fang, Jackie Ho, Vishesh Jain, Curran Kaushik, Arjun Mody, Haran Sivukumar, Kevin Zhang and Andrew Zhou) was ranked fourth, and the Varsity B team of seniors (Namrata Anand, Brandon Araki, Jeanette Chin, James Feng, Alex Han, Andrea Lincoln, Rachel Luo and Adam Perelman) placed eighth.
In the Division 2 category (which includes private schools containing more than 150 seniors), Varsity D took first place, with Varsity C earning second. Division 2 category rankings are based only on the second part of the competition. “D did better in part II, but C did better in part I, giving them the best ‘overall’ score,” said US math teacher and JETS advisor Anthony Silk. Also in Division 2, the Varsity A team took third. Tying for the 10th place spot was the Varsity B team of juniors Namrata Anand, Brandon Araki, Jeanette Chin, James Feng, Alex Han, Andrea Lincoln, Rachel Luo and Adam Perelman.
At the state level, the Harker’s four varsity teams took all of the top four Division 2 spots, with Varsity C placing first, Varsity B coming in second, Varsity D at third and Varsity A at fourth. In Junior Varsity Division 2 competition, Harker’s Junior Varsity B team of freshmen Lucy Cheng, Alexander Hsu, Revanth Kosaraju, Jeffrey Kwong, Ramya Rangan, Pavitra Rengarajan, Katie Siegel and Albert Wu earned the top spot to become the only JV team in Division 2 to qualify for the national competition, where they placed 27th overall. Harker’s Junior Varsity A team – sophomores Tracey Chan, Josephine Chen, Isaac Madan, Jerry Sun, Ben Tien, Susan Tu, Karen Wong and Kevin Tran – earned fourth.
Although they were not directly sponsored by the school, ninth graders Michelle Deng, Patrick Yang, Eric Kong, Vishesh Gupta, Frederic Enea and Daryl Neubieser nonetheless participated, taking second place in Junior Varsity Division 2.