![Watching a small group scrimmage, Ben Lundt, St. Louis City SC goalkeeper and founder of Lundt Pro Soccer Training, shouts words of encouragement to players on Sunday, April 26 n the Lafayette grass soccer field. “The idea behind [the event] was to bring the professional soccer players closer to the community because usually people only get to see us on TV or in the stadium. [Families] actually having the opportunity to have their kids on the field with us is the most important aspect,” Ben Lundt said.](https://lancerfeed.press/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/IMG_6823-1200x800.jpg)
![In celebration of winning his second straight state title in the 215 weight class, junior Carter Brown backflips before leaving the mat. Brown won his bout against junior Kobe Rhymes of North Kansas City High School by fall in just 41 seconds. "Carter does what Carter does. We expect [success] out of him and his goals are bigger than the state championship," coach Sam Ritchie said.](https://lancerfeed.press/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMG_2784-1200x800.jpg)
On Feb. 26, the LHS Science Olympiad team competed at Regionals at Lindenwood University.
They achieved an overall ranking of third place, which qualified them to advance to State. The team, along with three other teams from Regionals, will move on to compete in the State competition at Mizzou on April 16.
The Regionals competition consisted of 20 events, and each of the ten area high schools participating selected two members to compete in each event.
Science Olympiad sponsor Lisa Funez said, “The events range from knowledge-based tests, where students had to know about topics like fossils, to skills challenges, where students were asked to build a robot to perform a task.”
LHS took first place in two of the categories: Protein Modeling and Mousetrap Vehicle. They also scored highly in several others, allowing them to achieve a high overall ranking.
“The students get individual scores for the tasks, but it is the overall team score that determines the final ranking. The whole team will be advancing to State,” Funez said.
Junior Tyler Romero said, “We did really well, taking third place in one of the toughest regions. Everyone put in a lot of time and energy into preparing and it really paid off.”
The members of this year’s Science Olympiad team are: seniors Rachel Dennis, Steven Elser, Ben Howard, John Hu, Siri Kommareddy, Christina Schmidt and Stacy Zamskaya. Juniors Lizzy Denn, Richard Lu, Anthony Orso, Alex Radetic, Tyler Romero, Mac Slone and Connor Wolk. And sophomores Jason Lee and David Wang.
