Ten Venice High students won in different categories in the pre Math Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) Competition held Saturday, March 7 at USC and will compete in the LA County contest on April 25th at USC.

The four universities in Los Angeles that sponsor MESA are UCLA, USC, California State University, Los Angeles and California State University Long Beach. Each of these universities sponsors 16 high school MESA programs. The Venice High MESA club is sponsored by USC.

The 16 high schools sponsored by USC competed in the Pre-MESA Competition and the top three teams were selected from each category of the competition. These teams will represent USC by competing in the LA County Contest with other high schools that represent the other universities.

Venice High MESA students placed in several competitions in the Pre-MESA Contest. Venice got second place overall in the civil structures category. Mary Solimon and Linda Jaregui won second place in creativity and strongest bridge-making. Mellia Kanani and Emily Lui earned third place in the egg-drop competition from a six-story building. Joe Villarruel placed third in the Solo Geometry Test. Brenda Felipe, Lucy Pan and Kriseira Lamas won second place in the Team Trig/Calculus test. Pedro Selis and Aaron Cruz also earned third place for the airplane competition.

Strongest Bridge Competition winners Mary Solimon and Linda Jaregui said that it took them a long time to create the bridge and that it was harder than they had expected.

“I had done MESA in middle school, but over here it’s a lot more challenging and advanced,” said Solimon. “I was shaking and surprised when they announced the winner.”

“Now we have to make our bridge stronger for the next competition,” said Jaregui. “It took us a lot of effort and strength to complete this project so we are satisfied with our win.”

One of the Trig/Calculus Competition winners’ Kriseira Lamas mention that “I was the only one in my group taking calculus so I was very nervous but we worked hard as a group. We are excited and overwhelmed at the same time for the final competition.”

Mr. Donald Holland, the sponsor of Venice MESA club, said that students worked really hard and gave a lot of time and effort for this competition.

“It’s very exciting to see students compete with others from all over the city and work so hard,” said Mr. Holland.