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Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 8:54 am
by 1nxtmonster
EastStroudsburg13 wrote:Well, I think it’s high time for the 5th annual EastStroudsburg13 Makes Predictions for Regionals That Maybe Other People Read Or Maybe They Don’t But He Does It Anyway, right???

As an aside, 5 years? I’ve done this for 5 years??? Man, I’m old.

Anyways, here we go. I'm splitting this in half, B first.

Southeast: 1. Strath Haven, 2. Bala Cynwyd, 3. Welsh Valley, 4. Devon Prep, 5. Valley Forge. I am very unsure about this. On the one hand I don’t envision Strath Haven giving up first a year after such a thorough domination, but then Rustin happened and now I’m confused. For now I’m sticking with the same typical top three, with places given to Devon Prep and Valley Forge for great showings at Rustin. But I would not be surprised to see a massive shakeup this year.

Central: 1. Allen, 2. Hershey, 3. Eagle View. Allen is not going to give up first unless something shocking happens. Hershey seems to be a safe bet for second. After that it’s anyone’s game. I’m going with Eagle View, who have been steadily improving recently and have missed states by one spot for two straight years. I think this is the year they break through.

Also good for Central for getting 19 teams to sign up this year! That’s a good 5 or so teams that didn’t compete last year, which should make for a fun tournament.

Northwest: 1. Wilmington, 2. Clarion, 3. North Clarion. I will admit that I don’t know much about NW, since they’re in Erie and don’t normally compete at invitationals. Wilmington has been the top team that still competes in NW for three straight years, so they’re probably a safe first. For second and third, I’m just going to go with last year’s teams, giving Clarion the edge because they placed better at states than North Clarion. However, I would not be surprised to see North East have a bounce-back year.

Southwest: 1. Shady Side, 2. Franklin Regional, 3. Huston. Wrap it, pack it, lock it up, and mail it to Australia, Shady Side is getting first. If they lose at regionals I will officially just give up. Also I won’t pick you in FantaSO, so don’t lose Shady Side, because you care if I pick you in FantaSO, right????? (I lead an exciting life)

Northeast: 1. Wyoming Area, 2. Abington Heights, 3. Stroudsburg. This is going to be interesting. There are several teams who have a very real shot of placing in the top three, and there are five in particular that I debated between for the top 3. So with apologies to Park Forest and Wayne Highlands, these are the three I came up with. Stroudsburg placed 3rd at states last year, so even if they tend not to fulfill their full potential at regionals, and didn’t go to Rustin, I could not realistically leave them out. Abington Heights is the defending champion, and they should perform solidly again. My pick for first, though, is Wyoming Area. They were the highest-placed team from NE at Rustin, so they probably have a target on their backs, but I think they really want this (Or they should). Despite a good run of success, their only regional championship was back in 2008. Since then it’s been 3rd-2nd-2nd-N/A-3rd. It’s been some time coming since they got that first-place trophy, and I think that drought ends this year.

Central East: 1. Kutztown, 2. Whitehall Coplay, 3. Springhouse. Despite only having 10 teams this year (which is really unfortunate, they seem to be declining fairly significantly), there are some real good teams here. Whitehall Coplay is the safe pick, but Kutztown did very well at Rustin, and showed enough to tell me that the potential is there. But watch out for Springhouse, which is a fairly new team and finished 9th at states last year.
Not to sound braggish, but nobody saw Bedford getting second. Not even us :lol:

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 9:07 am
by EastStroudsburg13
You're right, I wasn't really expecting that! That's the great part about Science Olympiad though, there's always a chance for teams to come out of nowhere and surprise people. I think before 2012 nobody expected our team to get top 10 at states, but we still managed it! It's a great feeling to do better than people expect. :)

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 11:38 am
by 1nxtmonster
Off-Topic-ish question, but is it better to perfect your best events, or improve your worst events to get to nationals?

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 12:36 pm
by EastStroudsburg13
My philosophy was that it was always more important to improve the team's worst events, because there's more room to improve. Improving a 4th place event to 2nd or 1st is nice, but there'll be more of a positive impact if you improve a 30th place event to 20th. So given the nature of the scoring system, I would say generally try to improve your weaker events first (this goes for the team as well), and then if you have extra time, you can spend that to go for the gold. It is not the 1st-2nds-3rds that decide who goes to nationals most times; it's usually the 7ths-8ths-9ths.

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 3:06 pm
by Sciolapedia
I have a question for anybody who did metric at southwest regionals. Im from shadyside and we did REALLY bad in metric and i have no idea. It was seven stations of measuring so everybody has been telling me that i made some silly mistake which cost me a lot. However, my partner and I checked over our answers for 40 MINUTES even though all the teams left after 10 minutes. I SWEAR we knew everything. We spent a LONG Amount of time on every station. I was just wondering how everyone else did and if there were some directions I missed or something stupid that i missed. Anyway, not to sound annoying or mean to the other teams, but getting 14 out of 17 teams that competed kind of surprised me.

thanks :D

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 14th, 2014, 4:02 pm
by 1nxtmonster
Sciolapedia wrote:I have a question for anybody who did metric at southwest regionals. Im from shadyside and we did REALLY bad in metric and i have no idea. It was seven stations of measuring so everybody has been telling me that i made some silly mistake which cost me a lot. However, my partner and I checked over our answers for 40 MINUTES even though all the teams left after 10 minutes. I SWEAR we knew everything. We spent a LONG Amount of time on every station. I was just wondering how everyone else did and if there were some directions I missed or something stupid that i missed. Anyway, not to sound annoying or mean to the other teams, but getting 14 out of 17 teams that competed kind of surprised me.

thanks :D
Hi sciolapedia, I was at metric in your region, and I got so frustrated at regionals. Anyway, as we were walking out of metric, we saw the judges, who didn't appear to know their way around a ruler, making the answer key themselves! So even if you got the right answers, they weren't really the 'right' answer. So then I'm a little concerned, because we medaled....

It also wouldn't surprise me if they graded you wrong, because I saw a lot of things that shouldn't have been going on.

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 16th, 2014, 6:47 pm
by Cjkowalcz
Just wanted to remind everybody that Northeast Regional Results come out tomorrow :) Check to see if you placed fifth in any events and proceed to get really mad :twisted:

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 17th, 2014, 6:00 am
by solakmagic
Really interested to see the results for Division C, huge shake-up this year

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 17th, 2014, 7:07 am
by 1nxtmonster
Anyone have a link to the event results for SW?

Re: Pennsylvania 2014

Posted: March 17th, 2014, 7:11 am
by solakmagic
Northeast results are up!
http://www2.wb.psu.edu/uwt/nepascioly/

Anybody in Division C Experimental Design? Myself and two of my teammates took first at Regionals in ED as sophomores, and the three of us came back this year and took 17th?!?