ST. GEORGE — St. George Academy’s eighth grade students once again demonstrated their academic prowess by excelling in a national chemistry contest hosted by the Chemical Education Foundation.

The contest, known as “You Be The Chemist,” is designed for students in grades 5-8 and requires participants to apply their chemistry knowledge to solve real-world problems.

“I introduce the competition to my students towards the end of October,” science teacher Trevor Anderson said. “They then volunteer to come in once a week to prepare and learn extra material.”

Despite the challenge of getting eighth graders to voluntarily sacrifice their lunch breaks for extra study sessions, several students stepped up this year, showing a remarkable commitment to their academic growth, he said.

“They would come in and donate their lunchtime to studying chemistry,” Anderson said. “As we got closer to the regional event, they would come in and tell me how much they had done at home, even though it wasn’t homework going toward a grade. These were students who simply wanted to excel and succeed in this chemistry competition.”

Although St. George Academy has students grades 8-12, the contest maxed out with eighth graders so the lower classman at the Academy had a chance to shine.

Next year, St. George Academy will have seventh grade, and Anderson said he’ll have even more talented students to participate.

“I will get a new group of eighth graders at the start of the school year, and I’ll say, ‘Hey, this is what we did this year. Last year, we won regionals, went to Cedar City, competed, and won,'” Anderson said. “I want to keep up this tradition of St. George Academy winning regionals because now we’ve done it two years in a row. Now, we can say we are the reigning state champions. I want to keep that going and qualify for nationals.”

Only 5-10 teams qualify for nationals, so winning state doesn’t guarantee nationals.

“Our goal now is regional, state, and then national competition,” Anderson said.

After the qualification exam, two of the school’s three teams advanced to the regional competition held at Enoch Elementary School on Feb. 2. The regional event had a quiz show format, where teams answered questions in rounds.

“Megan Meachum was our contact for the regional competition,” Anderson said. “Regionals had the format of a sit-down quiz show. The students sat with their teams, and everyone was given the same question, and they had 30 seconds to answer. They went through four rounds of 10 questions.”

St. George Academy’s team, consisting of Malia Dicus, Chase Hardy, Gabriel Wolfe and Matthew Nuckols, won first place.

Second place went to another St. George Academy team.

“This is the second year in a row that our school has taken first at the regional competition,” Anderson said.

For the state competition, the teams had to create a video. The task involved devising a proxy company using chemistry to solve a real-world problem, adhering to specific guidelines and rules.

“The students had to come up with a fictitious company that needed to use chemistry to solve a real-world problem,” Anderson said. “There were a lot of little details and rules they needed to follow.”

The videos were submitted on March 31, and on April 29, the team learned they had won the state competition.

Gabriel Wolfe, a member of the winning team, shared his excitement and challenges faced during the competition.

“When we won the state competition, I was thrilled because we had been waiting in anticipation for a month and I felt so happy because I never thought I would win something so big like this,” Wolfe said. “The hardest thing was the anxiety about trying to piece together a video to submit for the competition when one of our teammates was sick and wasn’t able to edit the video as planned, but we worked it out. The best thing about the You Be The Chemist competition was the chance to meet new people and have a great time while learning new things.”

Despite this achievement, not all state winners advance to the national level, and St. George Academy’s team did not qualify for nationals this year.

“We found out our regional winning team was also the state winner on Monday, April 29. We also found out that not all state winning teams qualify for the national competition,” Anderson said. “Unfortunately, we did not qualify for the national competition. But we are on the road to success.”

The students’ dedication and success have not gone unnoticed. Parents have expressed their admiration and support, with many reaching out to Anderson to share their positive feedback.

“The parents absolutely love it. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback through emails and phone calls,” Anderson said.

However, awareness of the program within the broader community remains limited, and Anderson said he wants the community to know about St. George Academy’s amazing students.

“We continually get students at St. George Academy who are invested in academics and taking science to the next level. It’s all student-led, and it’s great,” Anderson said.

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