ORANGE PARK – Ridgeview High has a secret sauce in their science department, and it’s the reason its students won the overwhelming majority of awards at the Clay County science fair this year.

There isn’t just one ingredient that makes it pop. Every major Ridgeview winner at this year’s fair had won in a previous year, so accepting the award was not new to them. That kind of success starts during their freshman year, according to school science fair coordinator Bethany Derousie.

“Every student that won went through [teacher Joseph McCoy’s] class,” Derousie said.

McCoy teaches science to freshman students and he said the science fair familiarization begins on Day 1. His classroom is adorned with science fair project boards and there’s an emphasis to start thinking about the fair right from the start. McCoy said Pre-International Baccalaureate students are required to participate in the fair.

“We try to start it as early as we can,” McCoy said. “Those skills they’ll need to use in their senior year, I try to get started in the freshman year.”

McCoy said there’s too much opportunity to be had from the science fair to just allow students to treat it as a simple science experiment. It can open a lot of doors for students, McCoy said.

DeRousie said McCoy is the school’s science fair torch lighter. She also said the science fair is bigger than just the fair itself. The participants do a lot of community outreach.

“It’s about solving problems in the world with science,” Derousie said. “We try to make sure our students are doing a project about a problem they really want to solve, a problem they’ve seen in the world. It’s about finding a solution for that problem to help someone in this world.

“We always ask them, ‘what will this do to make the world a better place?’”

Physics teacher Devan Skapetis teaches students in the International Baccalaureate program and receives the handoff from McCoy’s teaching. He said the more meaningful a project is to a student’s life, the better. The IB program helps with that.

“It’s a worldly program,” Skapetis said. “It gives them a special outlook on life and additional goals to overcome.”

Skapetis said his job is to enable students to ask questions. “Our questions guide them toward what they need to do,” Skapetis said.

The success comes from the students first and foremost, Skapetis, McCoy and Derousie said, but the science department’s intercommunication plays a large role too. McCoy said if a student has a physics question, he’ll send them to Skapetis. If that student then stumbles across a chemistry question, Skapetis will send them to the chemistry teacher down the hall.

“Our students and teachers have never been afraid to work together like that,” Derousie said. “Students will talk to teachers they’ve never met as if they’re in their class because that kind of dynamic is present here. The teachers know what the student’s goal is and their job is to help them reach that. Our students know that.”

Clay County Science Fair Coordinator Christopher Okamoto said that dynamic is present between students, too.

“Our students are always helping each other out,” Okamoto said. “Someone with a good grasp on robotics might help someone new looking to start a project in that field. They’re always willing to help in that regard.”

Skapetis said those dynamics instill a sense of great pride in the school’s science fair performance. He said teachers feel like proud parents when their students do well. McCoy especially loves to see the progress of senior students that started their science fair career in his class four years prior.

Despite being in her first year as the principal, Becky Murphy is blown away by the school’s science fair culture.

“We have students really trying to solve real-world problems and that stems from teachers working hard to incite a love for science in them,” Murphy said. “We celebrate educational achievements just as much as we celebrate athletics here and it fosters a sense of care across the board.

“Celebrating what students do is essential to the success of their education and the science fair success our students find each year stands as a testament to that.”