Whiz Kids: Champions; Churchill, Longfellow; Langley International Night

We write a lot about local politicians, Tysons Corner traffic tangles and other grown-up goings on about town, but we thought we'd pause a moment to highlight some of our younger neighbors.

These McLean kids - and young adults - caught our attention for their recent accomplishments. A round of applause for the group, please!

FCPS Students Win Top Honors at National Elementary Chess Championship: The team from Churchill Road Elementary School finished first in the K-6 Blitz category and fourth in the K-6 Championship category.

Team members are Sean Senft, Maxwell Ward, Akhil Goel, and Arman Parastaran.

Awesome Rubik's Cube Team. The Longfellow Middle Rubik’s Cube team defended its title at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, solving 25 cubes in two minutes and five seconds. 

The 10 team members earned a $500 prize for their school by winning the competition. 

Middle School National History tournament. A team of four Longfellow Middle students won first place in the inaugural Middle School National History tournament.

The team of Tajin Rogers, Junyoung Hwang, Andrew Farnsworth, Julius Fan, and Daniel Ducic captured the first place trophy. Rogers was named MVP of the tournament.  Eugene Huang served as the group’s sponsor. 

More Longfellow Awards. The Longfellow Middle Model United Nations team won the Secretary General’s award for the best school at the final Model UN conference of the year, hosted by Rocky Run Middle. 

Longfellow team members are Kareem Al-Attar, Mariam Alkateb, Ashlee Chung, Clara Fontaine, Chris Gehman, Abdel Hammad, Jinwook Hwang, Anoop Kalra, Caroline Kim, Jeewoo Kim, Grace Lee, Jeffrey Liu, Takehiro Mochizuki, Caroline Nguyen, Stephen Palathingal, Steve Pardo,  Neraj Prasad, Dan Qi, Ramya Ravi, Sneeha Ravi, Rebecca Rice, Shivani Saboo, Young In Seo, Fatima Shahbaz, Virginia Sun, Charlotte Sununu, Giancarlo Valdetaro, Henry Wu, and Peter Xu. 

Langley High International Night: The Saxon Scope, Langley's student newspaper, reported: From a Chinese ribbon dance and an Egyptian belly dance to an Indian love song and a Japanese piano piece, the acts showcased a wide diversity of art and music. The grand finale featured a fashion show of the traditional attires of different countries.

The acts were:

1. Traditional Chinese Ribbon Dance (Rosaline Lee, Vicky Wang)
2. Korean song: I’m Alone (Suzanne Kim)
3. Egyptian belly dance (Daisy Horning)
4. South Indian Telugu love song: Nenani Neevani (Swetha Mannem)
5. Drum solo (Tony Cheng)
6. C-pop dance: Bu Yao Bu Yao (Rosaline Lee, Vicky Wang, Jenny Liu)
7. Indian dance: Kaun Nach di and Jhoom barabar jhoom (Prerna Das)
8. Indian dance: Barso Re (Muskan Mumtaz, Veoma Chauhan, Swetha Mannem )
9. Korean traditional instrument: Kaayakeum (Susie Kim)
10. Korean songs: Beautiful Break-up, So Weigtless (Hoonie Kim)
11. Song: Safe and sound (Hoonie Kim, Suzanne Kim)
12. Bharatanatyam Indian Dance: Kartikeya Padaam (Pallavi Rudraraju)
13. Piano Solo: Summer by Joe Hisashi, River Flows in You by Iruma (Sid Chawla)
14. Song: When It Rains by Paramore (Divita Vohra Seth Coggeshall on guitar)

More Langley News.

State Science Bowl 3rd Place --our highest finish in history! Science Fair Awards
o Gina Li, 1st place, at the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair
o Jason Cui, 2nd place, at the State Fair
o Three Regional Grand Prize Winners – tied with TJ and Chantilly
o Six Regional 1st Place winners including one Grand Prize Nominee
o Six Regional 2nd Place winners
o One Regional 3rd Place winner Science Olympiad 2012 STATE CHAMPIONS!

Kids Inquiry Conference: Twenty five 6^th Grade students from Spring Hill attended the Kids Inquiry Conference at the National Wildlife Federation Center in Reston recently.

The students presented their inquiry-based science projects to students from 5 other schools in Fairfax County, and in turn watched those students’ presentations.

The students attending were: Teddy Daniel,  Kat Johnston, Danielle Sterling, Lauren Divney, Madeleine Duley, Alexa Fermin, Su-A Kim, Kyoko Minamino, Sam Etemad-Moghadam,  Matthieu Shivnen, Yunus Ozsoy, Ben Hunt, Nicholas Mill, Lauren Nazarian, Kevin Hanlon, Andrew Chilton, Nathan Shin, Will Baruch, Jenny Kim,  Kelsey Gilchrist, Jessica Park, Emma Gilmore, Terry Keffer, Josh Havermale,  Byron DeJesus.

MVP. Abby Petersen of McLean, VA, and a student at Georgetown Visitation, was recently named the Most Valuable Player in the District of Columbia's High School Championship game.

This item was submitted by her proud father.