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Looking forward to starting Division C this year. Hopefully I can walk away with something at State's this time around, I had a bad day last year(and 7th in Ecology :/ )

wlsguy wrote: At the West Liberty-Salem invitational the "Big 3" took 22 of 23 Gold Metals. This was at the end of the season before State. The breakdown is below. Congrads to Bayard Rustin who took the only other Gold Medal. The good thing is we give medals to 3rd and awards to 8th so many people got something. Incidentally, if you are interested in taking part, signups are now ongoing.
1st 2nd 3rd medals in order by each name
Solon 12 7 3
Centerville 7 8 6
Mentor 3 6 5
22 21 14

Alter 0 0 1
Village Acad 0 1 1
Bayard Rust 1 0 1
Beavercreek 0 1 1
Northmont 0 0 2
Shadyside 0 0 1

And I don't know if this makes it better or worse but 1/3 of the teams at WLS are from the "Big 3" which in one way makes me less worried about the domination of the top 3 medal places but worries me to know the strength they will continue to have even with seniors graduating.

I agree with Rockhound's analysis.

The bad thing about invitationals in Ohio is they are ALL very competitive.
This could be why Ohio has so many really good teams. Every competition is against the National Champions.

That must help a lot. Competing against national champions really raises the bar.

Teams in Ohio are lucky for several reasons.

1. Having so many good teams (arguably 3 of the top 10 teams in the nation between Solon, Mentor, and Centerville, certainly 3 of the top 20) means that every tournament is very competitive because there is a good chance that you will be facing up to 6 teams (even the B teams at those 3 schools are honestly probably good enough to score in the top 30 at Nationals) that are amazing, and that doesn't even include teams like Kenston, Chardon, St. Ignatius, and Beavercreek that are also very strong competitors and would be top teams in many other states.

2. Having so many good teams means more invitationals because good programs mean more interest from the community which means more willingness to host tournaments. More invitationals means more exposure to questions that may be asked again and more fine-tuning of answers. Essentially, more good teams means more invitationals means more opportunity for real-time practice under the pressure of a competition, and we all know that practice makes perfect.

3. This is probably the most controversial point, but so many good teams means there is a lot of room to "borrow" from other teams. For example, every Solon-run test event usually contains higher quality questions (and more of them) than the nationals test will. That means competitors, regardless of school, competing in Ohio now have some of the highest quality questions to study off of. Furthermore, and most controversial, some of the best builders go to those top schools in Ohio. Not that it's right, but having so many invitationals means lots of opportunity to scout out those top designs. I know this used to be a problem because some of those programs now save their top designs for the state and national competitions only and use more amateur (but usually still top 6) designs at competitions.

They are very lucky indeed. New York invitationals (as to my experience so far) have very low quality events.

what invitationals does your school go to, paleo?

The only one I've ever been to is the RCS invitational, for B division. I don't remember where the high school goes, but I do remember that it's in Pennsylvania and high profile- Solon goes as well (I think).

paleonaps95 wrote:The only one I've ever been to is the RCS invitational, for B division. I don't remember where the high school goes, but I do remember that it's in Pennsylvania and high profile- Solon goes as well (I think).

That would be the Twin Tiers Invitational at Athens, PA but Solon has not attended.

Okay, but I seem to remember that a lot of top schools attend, right?