How to fix olympiads biggest problem. (Or at least my biggest problem)

[Kylari04]

The Hawaii state tournament had this problem too. Our fast facts team almost got dq’d for the simple reason of failing to write their name (even though they wrote our school name). In addition, the meteorology test was on severe storms. Mystery Architecture was a mess, the event supervisors didn’t really know what they were doing and the materials they provided left no room for creativity.
I talked to someone on the board about fixing this, but they told me it is hard because you don’t want to make the volunteers angry, otherwise they won’t volunteer anymore.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to fix this problem? Somebody suggested having someone going over the rules with each supervisor, but that didn’t go so well mainly because it wasn’t given to anyone who didn’t ask for it.

[drcubbin]

Our second year into SO, we first attended and found the Coach's Weekend Meeting invaluable. They very clearly demonstrated the importance of a) being completely knowledgeable as an ES in your event and b) be fair, but even-handed about all matters while in the event. I have found that the best run events were where the ES knew their stuff and actually did deduct points for not following the rules (failing to write student names is a clear example - why would writing this be a problem and if the team forgets, and loses points? I am betting it won't happen next year and will make them better all around). Mandatory Coach's Weekend Meetings.

[Riptide]

I'm confused - Unome, aren't you still in Div C? Invitationals I understand, plenty of current competitors also write events, but how can you run events at Regionals if you're still in Div C?

Not too sure of how it is in Georgia, but in Texas not all regionals are held at universities where college students or professors can volunteer to run the tournament. We have one regional that is hosted by a non university, which is the Katy regional, hosted by Beckendorff (one of our feeder middle schools). Beckendorff has great teachers and parents, but it is practically impossible to run the entire regional (both B and C) without the help of students who are experienced in the events. I myself proctored 5 events at the regional and wrote 2 tests. I can understand why that might be sketchy, especially since we are proctoring our competitors, but when the alternative is to have teachers or parents who have very limited experience in Science Olympiad, and even less time to spend researching and learning their event write tests/proctor, I believe having current competitiors run events at the regional tournament is the best option.

[Unome]

I'm confused - Unome, aren't you still in Div C? Invitationals I understand, plenty of current competitors also write events, but how can you run events at Regionals if you're still in Div C?

Not too sure of how it is in Georgia, but in Texas not all regionals are held at universities where college students or professors can volunteer to run the tournament. We have one regional that is hosted by a non university, which is the Katy regional, hosted by Beckendorff (one of our feeder middle schools). Beckendorff has great teachers and parents, but it is practically impossible to run the entire regional (both B and C) without the help of students who are experienced in the events. I myself proctored 5 events at the regional and wrote 2 tests. I can understand why that might be sketchy, especially since we are proctoring our competitors, but when the alternative is to have teachers or parents who have very limited experience in Science Olympiad, and even less time to spend researching and learning their event write tests/proctor, I believe having current competitiors run events at the regional tournament is the best option.

I've written for a regional the last two years and State this year (Georgia has no combined B/C tournaments, and in the last 15 years only three state tournaments have been combined). On both assignments for the first year, I received notice less than two weeks prior to the tournament. Event supervisors are somewhat scarce around here (compared to e.g. Illinois or Ohio).

[cool hand luke]

Thanks for the honest discussion,
I have two ideas I wanted to float out there and see if you thought they were worth a darn.

1. Send out an email to the coaches at the beginning of the year. Frankly state we understand that there is oftentimes frustration with ES's. Tell them they can help the situation by volunteering to ES the other division. I'm over builds for my team, and all builds in Texas at state are done on day 1, and tests on Day 2. I'd be happy to ES a day 2 event.

2. Recognize great ES's. Something as simple as a card, $25 gift card, or a mention during the awards ceremony can really make people aware of the issue and want to step up there ES game. Id suggest taking nominations from the teams/coaches for who they thought was really good.

[knottingpurple]

I'm confused - Unome, aren't you still in Div C? Invitationals I understand, plenty of current competitors also write events, but how can you run events at Regionals if you're still in Div C?

Not too sure of how it is in Georgia, but in Texas not all regionals are held at universities where college students or professors can volunteer to run the tournament. We have one regional that is hosted by a non university, which is the Katy regional, hosted by Beckendorff (one of our feeder middle schools). Beckendorff has great teachers and parents, but it is practically impossible to run the entire regional (both B and C) without the help of students who are experienced in the events. I myself proctored 5 events at the regional and wrote 2 tests. I can understand why that might be sketchy, especially since we are proctoring our competitors, but when the alternative is to have teachers or parents who have very limited experience in Science Olympiad, and even less time to spend researching and learning their event write tests/proctor, I believe having current competitiors run events at the regional tournament is the best option.

I've written for a regional the last two years and State this year (Georgia has no combined B/C tournaments, and in the last 15 years only three state tournaments have been combined). On both assignments for the first year, I received notice less than two weeks prior to the tournament. Event supervisors are somewhat scarce around here (compared to e.g. Illinois or Ohio).

NJ also struggles to get enough volunteers, yet it explicitly states on their website that current high school students are not allowed to volunteer (so, not even our B team members who can't compete at States, or other classmates from school who did div B scioly and not div C, etc). I guess somehow I didn't realise this was an NJ specific rule.

Also, I think earlier in this conversation somebody mentioned reporting rules violations by ESes. This year we tried - as in, multiple different teams from NJ all filling complaints about several of the same events. And the tournament director simply decided not to consider any of the requests to throw out events. So you do need a tournament director willing to listen for that to work - in past years they would listen, but evidently the new director...

[windu34]

I think that this problem is being fixed rather more quickly than many of you think. If you look back like 4-5 years, the number of student-run invitationals was about 5-10. Now its something like 50-60. That is a HUGE exponential improvement and some of these people running and volunteering at these tournaments go on to help out at the regional/state level as well. I think that once many of these invitational tournaments hit carrying capacity, the effect will shift over to local regionals and state tournaments. The best way to try and help this problem is to become a Div D volunteer yourself - not only is it great to give back to scioly and improve the experience for others, its also a lot of fun and can be a great resume builder at the same time (I personally feel that being involved as Division D is more attractive to medical/grad schools on resume than as a competitor)

All in all, science Olympiad is certainly improving as far as quality goes - peoples expectations are just rising as well as many university-run invitationals have set high standards of quality that local regional/state competitions just do not have the resources to match it and reasonably so.

[Unome]

If you look back like 4-5 years, the number of student-run invitationals was about 5-10. Now its something like 50-60.

I'm pretty sure your numbers are off. If we are including student-run invitationals at high schools and such, the numbers are more like less than 5 vs. 15-20 today. Using only university invitationals, it's 1 vs. around a dozen today.

[Name]

If you look back like 4-5 years, the number of student-run invitationals was about 5-10. Now its something like 50-60.

I'm pretty sure your numbers are off. If we are including student-run invitationals at high schools and such, the numbers are more like less than 5 vs. 15-20 today. Using only university invitationals, it's 1 vs. around a dozen today.

Hmm I have access to over 50 different invite tests this year (not including tryouts) from both student ran and University invites. Going back 5 years I have 5 invite test

[Unome]

If you look back like 4-5 years, the number of student-run invitationals was about 5-10. Now its something like 50-60.

I'm pretty sure your numbers are off. If we are including student-run invitationals at high schools and such, the numbers are more like less than 5 vs. 15-20 today. Using only university invitationals, it's 1 vs. around a dozen today.

Hmm I have access to over 50 different invite tests this year (not including tryouts) from both student ran and University invites. Going back 5 years I have 5 invite test

In retrospect I've probably underestimated the number of student-run high school invitationals (since it's fairly difficult to find numbers on that). But, for university student-run invitationals my number should be accurate to within a few tournaments.