Illinois 2011

[lllazar]

You know, i feel our team has it too easy. None of the teams in our regional except 1 this year (a magnet school, what can you expect?) really do anything. Half of their events have people who don't have a clue, their building events are built the night before, or even on the day of regionals...its quite pathetic. I personally want more competition.

[mathemaniac]

What regional are you in?

[Skink]

and maybe we can make stae

Or move to Winnetka. Or Lincolnshire. Or go to IMSA.

I have a feeling that's fairly typical though, especially at the high school level where laziness and apathy run rampant. Events like Experimental Design and WIDI don't help. People walk into those blindly and medal. I know someone who took 1st in WIDI at Regionals without practicing once. That's appalling, if you ask me.

[chia]

But but what about Naperville Central? Last year was the first than IMSA did better than us >.>

[kjhsscioly]

...CLC, by any chance? I ask only 'cause there's one school listed there that I've never heard of, which would make sense if it were new to SO.

nahhh, we're COD. I was trying to get our coach to let us attend an invitational so that we could gain some competitive experience, but that never worked out. So, unfortunatly, this will be our first ever competition. We are a pretty motivated school, but I guess you're right, it'll take a while to create a truly strong program.

In the meantime, we're trying to do the best we can handeling regionals. Hopefully, we can pull together when I'm a senior, and maybe we can make stae

Don't worry too much. There are only 23 teams, a lot of which are JV, and the top 7 go to state, so if you are in the upper 50%, state is very likely.

[geekychic13]

hey guys, i know that i should be preparing for state and not next year, but do you think I should do Ecology, Ornithology, Fossils, Towers, & Anatomy, or is that too much for a 7th grader? because I did 4 for conference (one of them I started two days prior and got second), 3 for regionals, and am still doing 3 for state.

[Skink]

hey guys, i know that i should be preparing for state and not next year, but do you think I should do Ecology, Ornithology, Fossils, Towers, & Anatomy, or is that too much for a 7th grader? because I did 4 for conference (one of them I started two days prior and got second), 3 for regionals, and am still doing 3 for state.

Yeah, never look towards next season until this one's over with. It's a really bad habit to get into.
That depends on how smart, busy, and driven you are, how good your school is, how good your event coaches are, how competitive the events are at your Regional, and if you've done them before. To generalize, Towers doesn't take too much work, so let's say you have 4 events. If you are doing any of them now, you could definitely go for it and get by. I tend to prefer mastering a few learning events over overloading and medaling 5th in each; that's the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none syndrome. The most important thing, though, out of everyhting I said is how driven you are. If you want it, you can definitely do it.

[chia]

How can you say towers doesn't take too much work? All of the main building events do, in fact maybe even more so than some study events!

[Skink]

Yeah, but...middle schoolers' parents--particularly the engineers--tend to build them more often than not. Kudos to you if you built your own devices as a 6th grader .

[rfscoach]

hey guys, i know that i should be preparing for state and not next year, but do you think I should do Ecology, Ornithology, Fossils, Towers, & Anatomy, or is that too much for a 7th grader? because I did 4 for conference (one of them I started two days prior and got second), 3 for regionals, and am still doing 3 for state.

Next year Ornithology will switch to Forestry and Fossils will be replaced with Rocks and Minerals.