Sand Hill Elementary School had a strong showing in the district Science Olympiad held recently at the Georgia Tech campus in Pooler.

SHES won two events and finished in fifth place overall, just eight points shy of the winning team. Sand Hill, the only Effingham County elementary school that competed, ranked in the top five in 11 of the 16 events, including eight top-three finishes.

Stone Kessler and Jason Williams teamed up to take first place in barge building and third place in aerodynamics. Also finishing in first place were Heather Lee and Amelia Nance in the “weather or not” category.

Sand Hill took home two second-place awards: Zackary McCollum and Tyson Ray in bridge building, and Aiden Fields and Shayne Strickland in paper rockets.

Earning third-place finishes were Madeleine Fowler and Amelia Nance in the calculator contest, Brent Eversole and Clayton Horton in the “cool it” category and Rebekah Davis and Mary Peregrina in write it/do it.

Horton also teamed with Lee for fourth place in the chopper challenge, while Davis and Zoey Scholz finished fifth in mystery boxes. The team of Lee, Ray, Strickland and Ryton Ekern took fifth in “Science Jeopardy.”

SHES notched a pair of sixth-place finishes: Fields and McCollum in straw tower, and Peregrina and Logan Toler in surfing the net.

Rounding out Sand Hill’s top finishers were a trio of eighth places: Ekern and Fowler in mystery architecture, Eversole and Strickland in the straw egg drop, and Toler and Zoey Scholz in pasta bridge.