How do I motivate my team?

[platypusomelette]

This is possibly my last year to get past regionals. The problem is my school is so small, and so low achieving, that we don't even have tryouts because there's so little demand for each event. My coach doesn't want to do tryouts either because it takes too much effort, she doesn't want to bring us to invites because it's too much effort and she would need to help grade. We've consistently scored about 10 places away from making states but it annoys me so much that this could be easily fixed if everyone got above at least 20th place in their events. Any suggestions? We already have about 4 people taking 5-6 events each trying to carry the entire team.

[JoeyC]

Find the easiest regional. Scope out who's going to each place; where are the titan schools in NY going? Then head the other direction. It's worked for me, and it's way easier to medal. (because all the competition is gone).

[Name]

Find the easiest regional. Scope out who's going to each place; where are the titan schools in NY going? Then head the other direction. It's worked for me, and it's way easier to medal. (because all the competition is gone).

NY doesn't have open regionals, you have to attend the regionals your closest to

[knottingpurple]

Not all invitationals require coaches to grade? Princeton and UPenn are both within a reasonable range of Long Island where it looks like you're from, and neither requires any grading from coaches, i think. (PUSO also has the advantage, if nothing's changed since last year, of having no registration fee.) They're both full at the moment so i don't know if it's worth it for you to get on the waitlist this year, but i guess it is worth thinking about, if you could go to one of these invitationals which won't require so much from her (or if you can get parents to do it instead at another invitational, we've definitely done that before, and we've also gone to invitationals close enough that parents can just carpool the students rather than paying for buses) would you be able to do that?

Other than invites, the main thing I always found gets people to work is practices. You haven't told us what your expectations of hours of work from your team are at the moment, but i've always found if you go to the library as a big group on a weekend for a couple of hours for the purpose of studying or practicing you're more peer pressured into doing it than you would be on your own. Give fair warning, with expectations of numbers of hours of attendance, tell anyone they need a valid excuse in advance if they're not gonna show up and the follow up if they don't show up and find out why. Reward people as well who do meet the expectations, but yeah... having high expectations is one way to get people to live up to those expectations, right?

[Jacobi]

If you want to motivate your team, you need a personal commitment. For example, buy team T-shirts! Even better, have a pizza and practice session. Both have worked for my team.

[DragonTownEpic]

Candy. Mic drop.

[JoeyC]

That being said you need a reason as Jacobi said to motivate your team. Perhaps not candy for High Schoolers, but free food, socials, and mass practice sessions that you or your team can organize are all great ways to motivate people.

[linzhiyan]

There's no "perfect" way to motivate a team, but winning should never be used as a motivation. Just, give the students freedom and choice. Don't force someone to do an event. I mean, sure, you can talk with that person and try to persuade them to compete in that event, but let the students decide for themselves. Since this is still new to them, give them a little leeway and let them set their own expectations.
The main thing to get out of this though is to not motivate them with the hope of winning. Winning is not what Science Olympiad is all about. Instead, Science Olympiad is about having fun and working together. Winning is just a consequence of hard work and good teamwork.

[megrimlockawesom]

practice sessions and food. thats what my middle school did

[antigem]

Yup, practice sessions with food. Once you get to state once and possibly travel, people will be motivated to try and make it again.