The program started in the 2015-2016 season, finding its foundations for the first two years as the club gathered more participation and enthusiasm. In 2018, the team made major strides forward and the Marquette Invitational was introduced. The team started attending local invitationals, won their first regional tournament, and placed 3rd at the Wisconsin state competition. In 2019, they began traveling to Illinois for some invitationals and demonstrated that they were able to challenge Madison West High School and Menomonie High School. They placed 3rd again, but were much closer than before. In 2020, the team again improved, eyeing their trip to the 2020 National Tournament. The season was unfortunately cut short by COVID.
The team started to gain national attention in 2021. While the pandemic dampened enthusiasm for many teams, it only drove Marquette to work harder. They attended many virtual invitationals from across the country, showing that they could compete with national powerhouses. The Marquette Invitational temporarily expanded to accommodate Mini SO and Satellite SO teams in both Division B and C, making it the largest invitational in Wisconsin history at the time. They won their first Wisconsin state tournament, qualifying for the 2021 National Tournament, where they placed 14th. In 2022, they began hosting the Division BMarquette Regional in coordination with the Division CMarquette Invitational, attended in-person invitationals in Michigan and Ohio, and expanded on their previous successes. The team placed 4th at MIT, repeated as Wisconsin state champions with a near-perfect score, and advanced to the 2022 National Tournament, where they placed 4th, just 16 points behind national champion Mason High School.
In 2023, the team flew out to a competition for the first time, placing 12th at the MIT Invitational. Despite losing a strong senior class, they won their third consecutive state title and placed 11th at the 2023 National Tournament. In 2024, the team narrowly clinched a 4th straight state championship. Increased registration allowed both Marquette and rival Madison West to attend the 2024 National Tournament, where Marquette returned to the trophies with a 10th-place finish. In 2025, the Marquette Invitational again expanded to include Division B. The team began attending numerous online invitationals again. They placed 6th at MIT and 9th at the 2025 National Tournament.
1 - Spirit Award 2 - Outstanding Student Award 3 - Only 18 events scored; builds trialed 4 - Perfect score; only 22 events were scored as Geocaching was not run 5 - B team competed while A team attended MIT
Invitational History
The following are the overall results in the combined division (including exhibition teams) for the highest-placing Marquette team at each tournament. For most tournaments, this is the A team. The 'B' and 'C' markers indicate tournaments where the A or A & B teams were not present, respectively. The 'U' marker indicates an unstack. The 'P' marker indicates much of the A team being absent (since the Solon invite often runs at the same time as Marquette's freshman retreat) Numeric markers indicate the number of no-shows. Note that these placements sometimes differ from the team trophies received, as some tournaments exclude the host and/or exhibition teams from team awards and others prevent them from displacing.
Marquette came onto the radars of many teams across the country at the BEARSO Invitational, the first virtual tournament ever, where they placed 20th out of 203 teams.
After Marquette placed 3rd at the 2021 Boyceville Invitational, the team was ranked 26th in the nation in the Scioly.org midseason poll.
Marquette won its first state championship at the 2021 Wisconsin State Tournament, setting a new state record with 38 points (13 gold medals, 5 silvers, and 5 bronzes).
Marquette won the 2022 Boyceville Invitational, the 4th-largest Division C tournament in history, with a score of 123 points and a margin of victory of 93 points. This is the lowest score and 2nd-largest margin of victory ever recorded at a super-tournament (150+ teams).
After Marquette placed 4th at the 2022 MIT Invitational, the team was ranked 9th in the nation in the Scioly.org midseason poll.
In 2022, Marquette achieved a perfect score at Regionals.
At the 2022 Wisconsin State Tournament, Marquette set new state records with 29 points (19 gold medals, 2 silvers, 2 bronzes) and a 91-point margin of victory over second place Menomonie High School. It was also the lowest score at any state tournament by any team in 2022.
Marquette's 4th place finish at the 2022 National Tournament was the best finish by a Wisconsin team since Madison West High School's 2nd place in 1989. Their score of 230 places them amongst the great teams in history; that score would have won nationals in 2016, 2019, 2024, or 2025, and makes them one of only 9 schools all-time to average 10th place or better across all 23 events.
Marquette is unique amongst nationally competitive Science Olympiad programs in that they are the only private school, only Catholic school, only Jesuit school, only all-male school, only school located in an urban area, and only school with under 1000 students.
Marquette Science Olympiad members have attended many prestigious universities, including MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, UChicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and WashU.
Wisconsin
2018-present
2022
