Scioly.org

CMS AC wrote:Also, why does NJ have 18 people on a team instead of the normal 15?

Tis a great mystery presumably for the purpose of causing logistical headaches.

knottingpurple wrote:

CMS AC wrote:Also, why does NJ have 18 people on a team instead of the normal 15?

Tis a great mystery presumably for the purpose of causing logistical headaches.

I don't understand why NJ would make coaches go through the painful process of kicking three members after they win states. It just doesn't make sense.

CookiePie1 wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:

CMS AC wrote:Also, why does NJ have 18 people on a team instead of the normal 15?

Tis a great mystery presumably for the purpose of causing logistical headaches.

I don't understand why NJ would make coaches go through the painful process of kicking three members after they win states. It just doesn't make sense.

It's not just painful. It's like

Matholy wrote:

CookiePie1 wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:
Tis a great mystery presumably for the purpose of causing logistical headaches.

I don't understand why NJ would make coaches go through the painful process of kicking three members after they win states. It just doesn't make sense.

It's not just painful. It's like

Yeah, I feel like this was another one the decisions NJSO made in order to try and include more people, although it definitely makes stuff a lot worse for the winners.

Do people think that if there were a concerted effort to ask NJSO to move their tournament to a weekend or at least a Friday, do you think they would listen? As a senior who would love to ES next year, but for whom the closest university I'm seriously considering is several hours away, there's no way for me to miss all the classes I would need to, in order to get to Middlesex County College in the middle of the week in March. Since I'm sure many other alumni volunteers would have this problem, and probably also plenty of parents who have jobs, etc, would NJSO listen to the argument that they could have more volunteers if they moved their tournament day of the week - and not only would the presence of more alumni greatly improve the quality of the competition, but presumably a surplus of volunteers would mean people affiliated with a div C team would be able to be kept out of C events (this year, that would've included astro, XD, who knows what else)?

knottingpurple wrote:Do people think that if there were a concerted effort to ask NJSO to move their tournament to a weekend or at least a Friday, do you think they would listen? As a senior who would love to ES next year, but for whom the closest university I'm seriously considering is several hours away, there's no way for me to miss all the classes I would need to, in order to get to Middlesex County College in the middle of the week in March. Since I'm sure many other alumni volunteers would have this problem, and probably also plenty of parents who have jobs, etc, would NJSO listen to the argument that they could have more volunteers if they moved their tournament day of the week - and not only would the presence of more alumni greatly improve the quality of the competition, but presumably a surplus of volunteers would mean people affiliated with a div C team would be able to be kept out of C events (this year, that would've included astro, XD, who knows what else)?

TBH I think the first priority of NJSO should be the quality of the events. There's way to many people (including me) complaining about the tests, as well as tower testing devices, etc.
There are many tests that don't have/have really weird/have messed up lab sections, the tower's testing device is a board with a hole (the sides aren't even straight), and we had to use a backup tower as opposed to our main tower because the main tower wouldn't fit. TBH, I don't even want a auto loader. Just any loader which is one table (not a board).
The WIDI test I took was like, too easy. My partner thought something happened because I finished in like 5-10 minutes (no exaggeration). We still placed second, although we were 70% confident everything was correct.

Matholy wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:Do people think that if there were a concerted effort to ask NJSO to move their tournament to a weekend or at least a Friday, do you think they would listen? As a senior who would love to ES next year, but for whom the closest university I'm seriously considering is several hours away, there's no way for me to miss all the classes I would need to, in order to get to Middlesex County College in the middle of the week in March. Since I'm sure many other alumni volunteers would have this problem, and probably also plenty of parents who have jobs, etc, would NJSO listen to the argument that they could have more volunteers if they moved their tournament day of the week - and not only would the presence of more alumni greatly improve the quality of the competition, but presumably a surplus of volunteers would mean people affiliated with a div C team would be able to be kept out of C events (this year, that would've included astro, XD, who knows what else)?

TBH I think the first priority of NJSO should be the quality of the events. There's way to many people (including me) complaining about the tests, as well as tower testing devices, etc.
There are many tests that don't have/have really weird/have messed up lab sections, the tower's testing device is a board with a hole (the sides aren't even straight), and we had to use a backup tower as opposed to our main tower because the main tower wouldn't fit. TBH, I don't even want a auto loader. Just any loader which is one table (not a board).
The WIDI test I took was like, too easy. My partner thought something happened because I finished in like 5-10 minutes (no exaggeration). We still placed second, although we were 70% confident everything was correct.

Event quality doesn't just suddenly get better, it requires people available to make them better - hence the suggestion to move the tournament to a more convenient date for volunteers.

Unome wrote:

Matholy wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:Do people think that if there were a concerted effort to ask NJSO to move their tournament to a weekend or at least a Friday, do you think they would listen? As a senior who would love to ES next year, but for whom the closest university I'm seriously considering is several hours away, there's no way for me to miss all the classes I would need to, in order to get to Middlesex County College in the middle of the week in March. Since I'm sure many other alumni volunteers would have this problem, and probably also plenty of parents who have jobs, etc, would NJSO listen to the argument that they could have more volunteers if they moved their tournament day of the week - and not only would the presence of more alumni greatly improve the quality of the competition, but presumably a surplus of volunteers would mean people affiliated with a div C team would be able to be kept out of C events (this year, that would've included astro, XD, who knows what else)?

TBH I think the first priority of NJSO should be the quality of the events. There's way to many people (including me) complaining about the tests, as well as tower testing devices, etc.
There are many tests that don't have/have really weird/have messed up lab sections, the tower's testing device is a board with a hole (the sides aren't even straight), and we had to use a backup tower as opposed to our main tower because the main tower wouldn't fit. TBH, I don't even want a auto loader. Just any loader which is one table (not a board).
The WIDI test I took was like, too easy. My partner thought something happened because I finished in like 5-10 minutes (no exaggeration). We still placed second, although we were 70% confident everything was correct.

Event quality doesn't just suddenly get better, it requires people available to make them better - hence the suggestion to move the tournament to a more convenient date for volunteers.

I would like to see that happen, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to get NJSO to actually move the day.

Anybody know why it is on a Tuesday in the first place?

Unome wrote:

Matholy wrote:

knottingpurple wrote:Do people think that if there were a concerted effort to ask NJSO to move their tournament to a weekend or at least a Friday, do you think they would listen? As a senior who would love to ES next year, but for whom the closest university I'm seriously considering is several hours away, there's no way for me to miss all the classes I would need to, in order to get to Middlesex County College in the middle of the week in March. Since I'm sure many other alumni volunteers would have this problem, and probably also plenty of parents who have jobs, etc, would NJSO listen to the argument that they could have more volunteers if they moved their tournament day of the week - and not only would the presence of more alumni greatly improve the quality of the competition, but presumably a surplus of volunteers would mean people affiliated with a div C team would be able to be kept out of C events (this year, that would've included astro, XD, who knows what else)?

TBH I think the first priority of NJSO should be the quality of the events. There's way to many people (including me) complaining about the tests, as well as tower testing devices, etc.
There are many tests that don't have/have really weird/have messed up lab sections, the tower's testing device is a board with a hole (the sides aren't even straight), and we had to use a backup tower as opposed to our main tower because the main tower wouldn't fit. TBH, I don't even want a auto loader. Just any loader which is one table (not a board).
The WIDI test I took was like, too easy. My partner thought something happened because I finished in like 5-10 minutes (no exaggeration). We still placed second, although we were 70% confident everything was correct.

Event quality doesn't just suddenly get better, it requires people available to make them better - hence the suggestion to move the tournament to a more convenient date for volunteers.

Yeah, that was my hope - due to the current lack of volunteers, NJSO has to put people where they have gaps in ESing who might not know anything about that event, even in the few cases those people know things about scioly. I have a friend whose parent ended up running one div B bio event when she'd planned to run a different one, there wasn't a rocks C supervisor until a couple days before and then the rest ended up being from a different state, and I imagine the easiest way to improve test quality would be to have more volunteers to check over tests and especially more volunteers familiar with the rules. Because I heard only good things about the quality of, say, lumo's astro test, but last year even lumo couldn't attend with it being a Tuesday he had stuff at university.

knottingpurple wrote:

Unome wrote:

Matholy wrote: TBH I think the first priority of NJSO should be the quality of the events. There's way to many people (including me) complaining about the tests, as well as tower testing devices, etc.
There are many tests that don't have/have really weird/have messed up lab sections, the tower's testing device is a board with a hole (the sides aren't even straight), and we had to use a backup tower as opposed to our main tower because the main tower wouldn't fit. TBH, I don't even want a auto loader. Just any loader which is one table (not a board).
The WIDI test I took was like, too easy. My partner thought something happened because I finished in like 5-10 minutes (no exaggeration). We still placed second, although we were 70% confident everything was correct.

Event quality doesn't just suddenly get better, it requires people available to make them better - hence the suggestion to move the tournament to a more convenient date for volunteers.

Yeah, that was my hope - due to the current lack of volunteers, NJSO has to put people where they have gaps in ESing who might not know anything about that event, even in the few cases those people know things about scioly. I have a friend whose parent ended up running one div B bio event when she'd planned to run a different one, there wasn't a rocks C supervisor until a couple days before and then the rest ended up being from a different state, and I imagine the easiest way to improve test quality would be to have more volunteers to check over tests and especially more volunteers familiar with the rules. Because I heard only good things about the quality of, say, lumo's astro test, but last year even lumo couldn't attend with it being a Tuesday he had stuff at university.

I don't really know much about the NJ situation specifically, but there is a good chance that the NJSO director(s) is to blame for the lack of quality and committed volunteers rather than just the inconvenient date. In Florida, the state director is constantly looking around to recruit volunteers and supervisors and builds and fosters relationships among past supervisors ensuring they want to come back again. Many of the volunteers are students from the university at which the tournament is held and there is always a decent number of faculty involved. This is the result of the director actively networking and reaching out. Additionally, the first emails started getting sent out ~1.5 months before the tournament date with update emails every two weeks or so which keeps supervisors accountable and unresponsive supervisors/volunteers can be identified as likely to not show up earlier so ample time exists to find replacements