University of Mississippi reigns supreme in Dental Olympics

Competition returns to SmileCon for third year

After two days of contests testing their dental knowledge, teamwork, dexterity and more, the students of the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Dentistry won the third annual Dental Olympics at SmileCon in New Orleans.

The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry was the runner-up in the competition taking place Oct. 18-19. The other two schools that competed were the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences College of Dentistry.

To kick things off, the teams went head to head in Dental Jeopardy, answering trivia questions focused on dental anatomy, fixed prosthodontics, operative dentistry, periodontics, prosthodontics and restorative dentistry.

The fun continued when the students participated in a teamwork challenge during the Bouncin’ at the Bayou Fest that night. Each team had to guide a cup with a ball on top of it through a maze by pulling it with strings.

The second day of competition continued with three games of dexterity. The students had to flip over cups and catch dice inside them, run around a stool three times and alternate between stacking and unstacking cups, and stack dice using chopsticks. The contest then concluded with the final rounds of Dental Jeopardy.

The University of Mississippi ultimately came out on top and was crowned the winner of the Dental Olympics, which were sponsored by Pacific Dental Services.