Thoughts on Competition Trends & Balancing Prep Across Events?

[Hadity]

Hey everyone,

As we head into the upcoming competition season, I’ve been thinking a lot about how different teams approach balancing depth vs. breadth across events. Some schools seem to go all-in on building events, while others dominate study events or find a really good balance.

For those of you who have been to invitationals or even states/nationals in past years — have you noticed any shifts in what makes teams most competitive lately? Are certain event categories (like Coding, Lab events, or Builds) becoming more dominant for high-performing teams?

Also curious how your team distributes prep time across events. Do you try to specialize people, or rotate and cross-train?

[Mathlete13]

For the Scioly team that I am on, it's pretty random honestly. We assign events based off of past medals, classes taken in the subject, and interest. We have one student that won't study, but is naturally brilliant. He's taken lots of chemistry classes, along with anatomy, so his events are Chemistry Lab and Anatomy. I've taken online courses with NCSSM on epidemiology and genetics, along with a class on forensics in my home high school, so my events are Disease Detectives, Designer Genes, and Forensics. We also have a competitor who is a genius, but isn't really specialized. They have the events Remote Sensing and Rocks/Minerals, because they are a filler for whatever we need. From what I've seen, the most successful teams have people specializing in different topics, and then having a few "filler people."