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Proctor for Wright Stuff at State and Regionals was awesome. Very professional and understanding even with the restrictions of flying in a church at oxy. One of my favorite event supervisors ever. Also the geomapping proctor that graduated from Troy. That guy really knows his stuff and it showed on the regionals test.

syo_astro wrote:Immediate shout outs to BroNi and Gary Vorwald among some other amazing NYSSO event supervisors that I've had the pleasure to do their events

I remember the NYS division B tournament in 2001 (before my current students were born!) I was competing in Battery Buggy, and at the impound, Bro. Nigel measured our axle-to-axle distance, finding our car 2mm over the limit. We were shocked, and he suggested we return (with the car) to our homeroom to seek another ruler, for a second opinion ... Being young and innocent, we did just that, rather than make a last minute adjustment Bro. Nigel was graciously allowing us to do. Needless to say, we were tiered, and placed low despite a decent run. From that moment on, as a competitor and coach, the Rules are the Law, and I owe that lesson to Bro. Nigel.

Shout out to GoldenKnight1 for Picture This at Southeastern Regionals!
On an unrelated note, I am so not doing that event next year.

This is very long overdue:

There is a woman from Pembroke Hill (a school who goes to a few of the same invites as my Middle School) who writes extremely good Entomology/Fossils tests. The first time I took one of her tests, it was my second competition. I still didn't really know what was going on in Ento, and I got rek'd by the test (23%). Although that is probably the worst I've ever done on a Science Olympiad test (not counting Nats), it is the reason I became interested in succeeding in Entomology. Her test was written in such a way that I understood what I needed to do in order to succeed.

At another invite the following year, I took a Fossils test written by the same person. Her fossils collection was pretty sweet, and my partner and I learned a lot from the test.

At a different invite last year, I took another one of her Entomology tests. It was just as great as the first one.

Bottom line here is: Hard tests are great. The quality of these tests was as good as (if not better) than the tests for the respective events I took at Nationals. If you are a proctor and enjoy writing hard tests, the Science Olympiad community needs more of you.

I remember once at a geomapping test a team brought a TI-84, and when the proctor was explaining the rules before the test she was like "programmable calculators are not allowed. For example..." and she suddenly snatched their calculator away while the other teams were watching.

We proceeded to bomb the test but oh well

The Fossils test was just great at Rustin because [insert thesis statement here].

The Crime Busters test at Rustin was the bomb, it was incredibly well written. The ES was super prepared, for literally every question someone asked, his answer was read the directions.

Pentathalon at Rustin was great. It was amusing to watch the people complete the tasks, but further more, the proctors were great at explaining the rules and what to do.

Don't believe I posted about BISOT 2016, but it ran by far the hardest and best Forensics test I ever had. To give you an idea, we got 3rd with a score of 180 out of ~600.

The proctor was a GT undergrad who probably did not have the time to put forth the effort needed to pull off this exam. Nevertheless, it covered EVERYTHING: powders, hair, plastics, fibers, blood, ento, DNA, and even bullets with real striations! For chromatography, she included both a TLC and paper chromatography test. Usually, I am not challenged by Forensics at tournaments. This time, however, I was stretched so much during that 50 minutes to the point that I told my partner to have fun with the powders while I finished the rest of the test.

As a competitor, I LOVE being challenged because it becomes easier for the hardworking, passionate competitors to be stratified from those whose moms forced them to be there or whatever. Those within the hardworking stratum end up having to push themselves for a medal, so winning actually means something. More proctors need to be like this one!

samlan, I hope you had your coach contact the tournament director (or did so yourself) with a thank-you to that particular ES, then, as I'm sure it'd be very appreciated.