Will/Did You Make It to Nationals?

[purplepeopleeater]

mmm... nope!
I think its too hypothetical... too many variables and not exactly fair not to mention complicated and the system we have now works just fine! I am however aware that you mean this to be hypothetical, and i think it should stay that way...
as for will my team make it to nationals??
hm i don't know... but the more invites we go to, the more I'm starting to think yes. the past two we have more than doubled the second/third place teams with scores in the 50s... if it stays consistent like that OR if we improve... then yes I think we will but we still have the rest of the year to go and regionals and state! so we will see...

[starpug]

Code: Select all

I was thinking about the national selection process today on the bus ride, because what else are going to think about on a 9-hour bus ride (besides watching all of the Lord of the Rings movies and two Star Wars movies)?

[b]I am in no way complaining about the current system, nor should any of you. It works great, really.[/b]

How's this for a hypothetical:
The national berths are divided like so:
[list][*]Last year's national champion (1)
[*]Each state champion (We'll say 42, because some states don't compete and I like that number) (42+1=43)
[*]Through some statistical analysis, etc etc something, NSO decides on the invitational tournaments that are most competitive (i.e. strength of participating teams) and awards a national berth to the winner of each of those invitational tournaments. (43+17=60) If you've, say, won an invite that qualifies to nationals and then you win state, then the state runner-up would go, and so on.[/list]

The advantages of the system would be the fact that it's likely the strongest and most deserving teams would get to go nationals, as we have many strong invites. The disadvantage is we might have a disproportionate number of teams from certain states, which would fluctuate from year to year. If a state has a lot of teams but none of them wins an qualifier, then just one team will get to go.

I think this would be an interesting format (again, purely hypothetical). If you win nationals, do you not work as hard the next year knowing that you'll be qualified already? Will teams study harder, earlier in the year, knowing that their opportunity to qualify may come earlier as well? Would teams be more inclined to travel further to invitationals, or not split their teams? I think it would have interesting impacts. Thoughts?

Code: Select all

I don't think this system would work at all. This would mean that the selected invitationals wouldn't be about getting new people used to SO or starting work on SO. These invitationals would very quickly lose their invitational identity, but instead would be seen as the early national qualification opportunites. Many teams would approach it very seriously. If a team knew that they had qualified for nationals in December, they would have no incentive to do well at regionals or state later in the year. They wouldn't even need to show up. They wouldn't bring their best building devices to state, because the competition would have much less meaning and they wouldn't want to risk having their brilliant ideas leaked.

I think the idea has potential except perhaps instead of choosing invitationals and using those to give out Nationals berths, what do you say we have a Sectional competition, sort of a last chance qualifier.
The winners of states still get an automatic berth and so does the winner of nationals, but we make some of the late states have their State competitions a little earlier and a month or so before nationals we have a round of sectional competitions. The great and benevolent gods of Science Olympiad would divide up the country into 8ish regions with an average of 6 states a piece (you do the math.) The top 10% at a state competition, besides the winner, gets to go on to these sectionals, so big states like NY get to send about 6 teams while a smaller state such as Maine would send 2. The top 2 at a sectional would get to go to nationals. I can imagine these sectionals ending up with a pretty awesome atmosphere, state rivalries and school rivalries all rolled into one, not to mention the "this is a chance to redeem ourselves" mentality. Sectionals really shouldn't be much bigger than states so I don't think finding a place to host it should be that hard. Now this could lead to long travel for some teams though and it is foreseeable to have 4 teams from the same state all go to nationals (1 nats champ, 1 state champ, and then sweeping the top 2 at Sectionals; looking at you O-H-I-O).

This is all purely hypothetical of course.

[Paradox21]

I think the idea has potential except perhaps instead of choosing invitationals and using those to give out Nationals berths, what do you say we have a Sectional competition, sort of a last chance qualifier.
The winners of states still get an automatic berth and so does the winner of nationals, but we make some of the late states have their State competitions a little earlier and a month or so before nationals we have a round of sectional competitions. The great and benevolent gods of Science Olympiad would divide up the country into 8ish regions with an average of 6 states a piece (you do the math.) The top 10% at a state competition, besides the winner, gets to go on to these sectionals, so big states like NY get to send about 6 teams while a smaller state such as Maine would send 2. The top 2 at a sectional would get to go to nationals. I can imagine these sectionals ending up with a pretty awesome atmosphere, state rivalries and school rivalries all rolled into one, not to mention the "this is a chance to redeem ourselves" mentality. Sectionals really shouldn't be much bigger than states so I don't think finding a place to host it should be that hard. Now this could lead to long travel for some teams though and it is foreseeable to have 4 teams from the same state all go to nationals (1 nats champ, 1 state champ, and then sweeping the top 2 at Sectionals; looking at you O-H-I-O).

This is all purely hypothetical of course.

I think this is an interesting idea. How would you deal with teams from Alaska and Hawaii? Would the 2nd and 3rd place teams have to fly really far for this competition? Would this mean that hundreds of teams would have to make overnight trips? Would they be able to afford such costly trips? Would that unfairly bias the presence of wealthy teams at nationals?

Also, I think it is a poor idea to give the national champion from the previous year an auto bid into nationals the next year. A new year means you have new students and you have to re-register your team. Plus, you really would not get the full Science Olympiad experience if you went through the whole year knowing that you didn't have to do well at any competitions to go to nationals.

[tornado guy]

I think the idea has potential except perhaps instead of choosing invitationals and using those to give out Nationals berths, what do you say we have a Sectional competition, sort of a last chance qualifier.
The winners of states still get an automatic berth and so does the winner of nationals, but we make some of the late states have their State competitions a little earlier and a month or so before nationals we have a round of sectional competitions. The great and benevolent gods of Science Olympiad would divide up the country into 8ish regions with an average of 6 states a piece (you do the math.) The top 10% at a state competition, besides the winner, gets to go on to these sectionals, so big states like NY get to send about 6 teams while a smaller state such as Maine would send 2. The top 2 at a sectional would get to go to nationals. I can imagine these sectionals ending up with a pretty awesome atmosphere, state rivalries and school rivalries all rolled into one, not to mention the "this is a chance to redeem ourselves" mentality. Sectionals really shouldn't be much bigger than states so I don't think finding a place to host it should be that hard. Now this could lead to long travel for some teams though and it is foreseeable to have 4 teams from the same state all go to nationals (1 nats champ, 1 state champ, and then sweeping the top 2 at Sectionals; looking at you O-H-I-O).

This is all purely hypothetical of course.

I think this is an interesting idea. How would you deal with teams from Alaska and Hawaii? Would the 2nd and 3rd place teams have to fly really far for this competition? Would this mean that hundreds of teams would have to make overnight trips? Would they be able to afford such costly trips? Would that unfairly bias the presence of wealthy teams at nationals?

Also, I think it is a poor idea to give the national champion from the previous year an auto bid into nationals the next year. A new year means you have new students and you have to re-register your team. Plus, you really would not get the full Science Olympiad experience if you went through the whole year knowing that you didn't have to do well at any competitions to go to nationals.

I agree with paradox on that the national champ from the previous year shouldn't get an auto bid into the national's for next year. The one part I strongly disagree with is only 16 teams going to nationals. Honestly I enjoy the atmosphere of all 120 teams coming together and competing.. I enjoy the swap meet and the grand opening ceremonies. The part I do like with the idea is that it is like a playoff. For us states way west out here, we only get 1-3 invites a year. So having a sectional would really help keep mediocre teams on their heels studying. Somehow you'd have to have a "neutral" spot to hold the sectional.. Or there could be schools that rotate in an out. Overall I kind of like this idea.

[foreverphysics]

Personally, I don't think this idea of invitationals will work. Some states (like mine, for example) don't even have invitationals. What to do then? Also, after the invitational stuff, there's just no incentive for the teams to work hard for States and Nats.
I like the system now just the way it is, personally.

[Mimsie]

mmm... nope!
I think its too hypothetical... too many variables and not exactly fair not to mention complicated and the system we have now works just fine! I am however aware that you mean this to be hypothetical, and i think it should stay that way...
as for will my team make it to nationals??
hm i don't know... but the more invites we go to, the more I'm starting to think yes. the past two we have more than doubled the second/third place teams with scores in the 50s... if it stays consistent like that OR if we improve... then yes I think we will but we still have the rest of the year to go and regionals and state! so we will see...

I agree with PPE (your name is too long and I'm a bum). It really does seem like too many variables. I know that for our team, our A and B team this year for invitationals/regionals aren't exactly all the best people (mostly the best people) on the A team. The reason why I think that happened was that there are the same 4 people fighting over Optics C all the time, so the team split them into A and B and gave all four of them opportunity to compete in the events they want. If we really were to have this invitational system, some people would never get the opportunity to compete in the events they really want to compete in.

As for nationals: I can say for sure there will be two teams from division C from Texas. And they will be competing in Florida. Yes, that sounds like a thing.

[starpug]

I think this is an interesting idea. How would you deal with teams from Alaska and Hawaii? Would the 2nd and 3rd place teams have to fly really far for this competition? Would this mean that hundreds of teams would have to make overnight trips? Would they be able to afford such costly trips? Would that unfairly bias the presence of wealthy teams at nationals?

Also, I think it is a poor idea to give the national champion from the previous year an auto bid into nationals the next year. A new year means you have new students and you have to re-register your team. Plus, you really would not get the full Science Olympiad experience if you went through the whole year knowing that you didn't have to do well at any competitions to go to nationals.

Hawaii and Alaska provide interesting conundrums, I might actually venture to just give them 2 state bids and be done with it (if you eliminate the auto bid for a Nats Champ, that actually makes the number an even 60.) As I believe I mentioned in my original post, location is going to be the trickiest thing about this, finding a location that is central enough so as to have modest travel times for all teams is important. I don't think staying overnight is as much of a problem (as long as it's only one night) as if any team would be forced to bus a long distance or to fly. Some states like PA and NY already have travel times considerable enough that some teams are forced to stay overnight.

Wasn't really considering the auto-bid thing, but you're right it's probably a bad idea.

I agree with paradox on that the national champ from the previous year shouldn't get an auto bid into the national's for next year. The one part I strongly disagree with is only 16 teams going to nationals. Honestly I enjoy the atmosphere of all 120 teams coming together and competing.. I enjoy the swap meet and the grand opening ceremonies. The part I do like with the idea is that it is like a playoff. For us states way west out here, we only get 1-3 invites a year. So having a sectional would really help keep mediocre teams on their heels studying. Somehow you'd have to have a "neutral" spot to hold the sectional.. Or there could be schools that rotate in an out. Overall I kind of like this idea.

The nats bids would break down something like this

• 44 state bids (2 for Hawaii and Alaska)
  16 Sectional bids (2 from each sectional

Ta da, 60 teams in each division

[purplepeopleeater]

As for nationals: I can say for sure there will be two teams from division C from Texas. And they will be competing in Florida

when was it ever not two teams from each division in texas??/ It had to be sometime...

[rfscoach]

Personally, I don't think this idea of invitationals will work. Some states (like mine, for example) don't even have invitationals. What to do then? Also, after the invitational stuff, there's just no incentive for the teams to work hard for States and Nats.
I like the system now just the way it is, personally.

There was an invite in Div B/C invite in Alabama on Saturday, Dec 3rd. Also the JC Booth Div B invite in Peachtree City, Ga. and the Bearden Div B invite in Knoxville, Tn are just 3 hrs away. Metro Atlanta Schools host 3 Div C invites in Nov and Dec. All easily accessible to Alabama schools.

[rohitjalaluddin]

With hard work and practice, any team can make it to the Nationals of Science Olympiad. Hard work and determination can cause teams to go to the nationals. Do well in regionals, do really well in states, and top it off by doing an overall good job in nationals! Rank matters, not correct.