Sophomores Callie Raacke and Ginny Ke and senior Johnny Fuller competed at regionals in Colby on Oct. 17 for the KU Night at the Lab.

The KU Night at the Lab is a new program from the KU Medical Center Area Health Education Center that allows students to showcase their knowledge of science and heath to their community.

“We took first over all out of five different teams,” Fuller said. “We were each given a topic about some aspect of the human body, and ours this time was the affects of high blood pressure, and we had to present to judges in a certain amount of time.”

The three will now be moving on to state on Nov. 27 and 28 in Kansas City.

”We were excited when we got first,” Raacke said. “Honestly, we were nervous though in the beginning. There was one girl who tested her own cholesterol, so we weren’t sure if we were going to make it into first place or not.”

Raacke was first to hear about the program from instructor Cheryl Shepherd-Adams who forwarded an email to her.

According to KU Area Heath Education Center, this program was first introduced in the Garden City Health Sciences Academy in 2013, and since then state winners have included Frontenac High School in Frontenac, Kan. (2013), Wheatland High School in Grainfield, Kan. (2014), Shawnee Mission North High School in Overland Park (2015), Central Heights High School in Richmond, Kan. (2016), and Shawnee Mission Center for Academic Advancement in Overland Park (2017).

“I think we did a bit better than I thought we were going to,” Fuller said. “A lot of the projects were really good too, and the competition was really good, so I didn’t really think we were going to do well, but we did.”

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