Will/Did You Make It to Nationals?

[tornado guy]

It's kind of early for this topic but if it's on here then....

Obviously Solon, J.C. Booth and Paul J Gelinas are all going to nationals... I hope we (ExCEL) goes this year, but we have tough competition up north and locally! Should be another great year of Science Olympiad

about Paul J Gelinas: I compete against them at states and our school has beaten them multiple times. There is another school, R C Murphy, competing against us and Gelinas at states and they have gotten third four years in a row, meaning they just missed going to nationals. They are getting angry and are rumoured to have been working EXTRAORDINARILY hard. So now there are three teams running for the two spots for going to nats, and Gelinas, who we beat last year, might not DEFINITELY be going to nats this year. Of course, it could just as easily be my team or R C Murphy missing the chance, but I hope this changes your opinion of how "obviously" Gelinas will be making it to nats. I hope this doesn't offend anyone, I thought I should just mention this little detail...

I'm sorry if I offended any teams working hard to beat these schools I listed. When I first wrote that comment I was mainly listing off teams that have been to nationals consecutive years in a row now and place top 10 at nationals.

[dillidall1]

It's kind of early for this topic but if it's on here then....

Obviously Solon, J.C. Booth and Paul J Gelinas are all going to nationals... I hope we (ExCEL) goes this year, but we have tough competition up north and locally! Should be another great year of Science Olympiad

We got 5th place last year against solon and a lot of other hard teams. This year we are determined to kick solon out of the running in states and we are studying very hard.

[foreverphysics]

It's kind of early for this topic but if it's on here then....

Obviously Solon, J.C. Booth and Paul J Gelinas are all going to nationals... I hope we (ExCEL) goes this year, but we have tough competition up north and locally! Should be another great year of Science Olympiad

We got 5th place last year against solon and a lot of other hard teams. This year we are determined to kick solon out of the running in states and we are studying very hard.

I wish you good luck. I also wish my team (with a few exceptions) had your team's dedication...

[geminicross]

It's kind of early for this topic but if it's on here then....

Obviously Solon, J.C. Booth and Paul J Gelinas are all going to nationals... I hope we (ExCEL) goes this year, but we have tough competition up north and locally! Should be another great year of Science Olympiad

Yeah, Georgia State competitions are usual for 2nd place. (Although those are usually fought between Fultion and Rising Starr).

We don't have a real shot for Nats but we're trying to do Top 10 at state.
We missed out on state by 1 point so we're trying our hardest; but the team is mostly 6th graders. Me and another girl are the only 8th graders.

The weird thing though, when we went to regionals with Rising Starr last year; they weren't that great.

[AlphaTauri]

A team's performance at Regionals isn't always an indicator of how well they do at other competitions, especially if they don't stack teams. Some teams just "bloom" late. For example, here in good ol' Pennsylvania, Harriton usually beats Penncrest at States by a pretty significant margin (around 50 points or so). But at Nationals, a mere 3 weeks later, Penncrest beats Harriton most of the time - no easy feat, since both teams are top 10 caliber.

[tornado guy]

A team's performance at Regionals isn't always an indicator of how well they do at other competitions, especially if they don't stack teams. Some teams just "bloom" late. For example, here in good ol' Pennsylvania, Harriton usually beats Penncrest at States by a pretty significant margin (around 50 points or so). But at Nationals, a mere 3 weeks later, Penncrest beats Harriton most of the time - no easy feat, since both teams are top 10 caliber.

It can be a "late bloom", but usually it has to do with point spread. For example, at state one team may get 10th place in an event, not as big of a deal because there are fewer teams, but at national they get 55th in that same event, big deal, because the point spread is greater....

[zyzzyva980]

I'm not so sure. It tends to happen a lot out here that a team suddenly roars ahead of everyone the last few competitions of the season. One team may start out in front in the invitational season and just flatline the rest of the year. The competition is so fierce out here, nothing is assured. The fact that we have a relatively high number of invitationals each just adds to the confusion.

[SciBomb97]

It seems that the northern states usually see the most competition.

[geminicross]

from a national or state-wide perspective?
And they were still a strong team at regionals, just not really (I guess the word would be) organized

[SciBomb97]

Actually, I was thinking even from the regionals perspective. Of course, that gets more intense higher up the ladder of competition.