Superregional

[builderguy135]

What if instead of superregionals, the top 10 teams at nationals every year gets an extra bid for their state the following year? This would not only keep the diversity of nationals, but also increase the difficulty of the competition and let the best teams go to nats.

[SciolyMaster]

Honestly, a better approach would just to have a single standardized set of tests at every state tournament. That way, nationals bids could be awarded to teams based on their scores in each event relative to every other team who participated across the country, thus ensuring that the best teams receive nats bids regardless of which state they compete in.

Of course, it'd be unrealistic for every state to have its state competition on the same date - making test security an issue. Perhaps there could be like three(?) standardized test sets, each with a set date on which roughly a third of the states' state tournaments will occur. For example (reducing the number of states for the sake of simplicity): Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin have their states on 3/20, using test set A; Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee have their states on 4/3, using test set B; Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio have their states on 4/17, using test set C; and the 5 teams that have the highest ranking on each test set gets to advance to nationals.

[jaggie34]

Examples
I've gone ahead and split states up into 10 theoretical superregions below (number of teams competing in parenthesis, from 2019 numbers):

Superregion A: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina (795)
Superregion B: North Carolina, Tennessee (828)
Superregion C: Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington D.C., Maryland, Ohio (735)
Superregion D: Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware (695)
Superregion E: New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts (852)
Superregion F: Michigan, Indiana (708)
Superregion G: Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (823)
Superregion H: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Northern California (772)
Superregion I: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico (730)
Superregion J: Southern California, Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado (834)

tf when you forget Missouri exists...

especially considering the brutal 1v1 slog that our state tournament has become due to having only one bid...

Sorry about that, I have Missouri on the paper I wrote it out on, just forgot to actually type it. Missouri would be in Superregion I.

[jaggie34]

What if instead of superregionals, the top 10 teams at nationals every year gets an extra bid for their state the following year? This would not only keep the diversity of nationals, but also increase the difficulty of the competition and let the best teams go to nats.

I'm not sure about this idea, I'm not sure a state like Minnesota has another nationals level team. They might, but I feel that there are likely more competitive teams out there.

[amineral]

Honestly, a better approach would just to have a single standardized set of tests at every state tournament. That way, nationals bids could be awarded to teams based on their scores in each event relative to every other team who participated across the country, thus ensuring that the best teams receive nats bids regardless of which state they compete in.

Of course, it'd be unrealistic for every state to have its state competition on the same date - making test security an issue. Perhaps there could be like three(?) standardized test sets, each with a set date on which roughly a third of the states' state tournaments will occur. For example (reducing the number of states for the sake of simplicity): Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin have their states on 3/20, using test set A; Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee have their states on 4/3, using test set B; Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio have their states on 4/17, using test set C; and the 5 teams that have the highest ranking on each test set gets to advance to nationals.

This idea also wouldn't work because of other specific factors. The main of which being supervisors could grade more lenient in certain states and build rooms would be different causing different scores. Not to mention this idea would also end up with 2 or 3 states getting all bids from one set.

[MadCow2357]

The idea of a superregional is quite interesting especially because of the new out of state rivalries it'll create. In Rhode Island, the Smithfield and Barrington school districts have taken 1st and 2nd place almost every year for a while now, dominating both divisions. There's not much competition other than that. Having to compete against CT, DE, NJ, and PA teams as well would be especially scary, and personally I don't think my team would see nats ever again. That being said, I think it's a fair system for bringing the strongest teams to nationals, though weaker teams will either prosper or die under this system.

[nicholasmaurer]

I am going to point at once again that Super-Regional tournaments, while interesting as a concept, are very impractical for the vast majority of teams. Solon HS is extremely privileged in terms of the financial and travel support we receive from our district, and has an extremely large fundraiser in the form of our annual invitational tournament. Yet attending a state and national tournament is already a huge financial investment for our team. I am not sure how we would afford another multi-night, out-of-state tournament if we needed to qualify via a Super-Regional tournament....

I know other top-ranked teams in Ohio would be in a similar or worse position if tasked with affording another major qualifying tournament.

Additionally, as a regional tournament director and invitational tournament director, I know the hundreds of hours of planning (and thousands of distributed volunteer hours) that go into hosting a successful tournament. For tournaments like regionals, states, and nationals where teams are not charged a registration fee, fundraising and identifying a host are both also tremendous burdens. Where would these Super-Regional tournaments be held, who would pay for them, and who would run them?

[JoeyC]

I think the main concerns this attempts to address (the inability of strong, viable teams to get out of state due to strong competition) could easily be solved by simply adding more bids to the states who need them.

[TheChiScientist]

I think the main concerns this attempts to address (the inability of strong, viable teams to get out of state due to strong competition) could easily be solved by simply adding more bids to the states who need them.

bUt ThAt'S tOo HaRd. F in the chat for MO and TX

[MadCow2357]

I am going to point at once again that Super-Regional tournaments, while interesting as a concept, are very impractical for the vast majority of teams. Solon HS is extremely privileged in terms of the financial and travel support we receive from our district, and has an extremely large fundraiser in the form of our annual invitational tournament. Yet attending a state and national tournament is already a huge financial investment for our team. I am not sure how we would afford another multi-night, out-of-state tournament if we needed to qualify via a Super-Regional tournament....

I know other top-ranked teams in Ohio would be in a similar or worse position if tasked with affording another major qualifying tournament.

Additionally, as a regional tournament director and invitational tournament director, I know the hundreds of hours of planning (and thousands of distributed volunteer hours) that go into hosting a successful tournament. For tournaments like regionals, states, and nationals where teams are not charged a registration fee, fundraising and identifying a host are both also tremendous burdens. Where would these Super-Regional tournaments be held, who would pay for them, and who would run them?

An interesting solution is to just get rid of State Tournaments altogether - go from regional directly to super-regional. This solves some of the issues involving travelling and hosting expenses.

However, I think the names would need some changing - I'd rename regionals as qualifying (or smth similar) and condense super-regional as regional. If you think about it, the US is usually divided into regions that contain multiple states, whereas Science Olympiad divides states into regions. Why they chose to name each tournament level this way is a small question I've always had ever since I joined SO in 2017.