Typical regional experience?

[cool hand luke]

We are desperately trying to wrap up our first ever competition. It's like the never ending nightmare. I've done a dozen different major national kid activities and organizations and this is by far the worst organized and run of anything I've ever seen.

Is this typical of regional competitions, what about state? Or did we just sign up for a bad region?

The competition idea is great but we'd be better off letting the middle schoolers organize it.

[SPP SciO]

In what ways was it disorganized? From your post it's difficult to tell (although I strongly suspect) that your experience was atypical.

Competitions are enormously complicated and completely volunteer run. For everything to work perfectly, everyone needs to be sharp, from the director to the event supervisors to coaches, volunteers, parents and students. There's a lot of moving parts.

If your team is new, there's a good chance the coach missed out on some details. Lots of info regarding logistics get passed to coaches, who are responsible for getting it out to everyone else. So, if you're not the coach, I'd make that your first conversation once all the dust settled.

Sorry to hear it was a mess - a typical tournament is a hectic day with a lot of hurry up and wait moments, but ultimately, students have a great time and make lifelong memories.

[Unome]

As someone who has actually run a tournament (my school's Division B invitational, with 36 teams), I can attest to the difficulty and time. I started getting stuff together in June, and in the three weeks before the tournament I spent an average of 20 hours a week preparing stuff. Having talked to a few regional tournament organizers, the process there is more difficult; just today I talked to a regional director who recounted an occasion where he wrote 8 tests in 2 days because his tournament had a shortage of event supervisors. In addition, room reservations are apparently very complicated at colleges. Science Olympiad tournaments tend to take a lot more effort and involvement to run than most other competitions because each event supervisor needs specific knowledge needed for the event. The average regional tournament uses around 30-40 event supervisors and around 60-120 other volunteers (I don't know the size of your regional). Depending on where you are, State might be better or worse (usually better, but varies).

Definitely mention specifics, that will help us judge the typicality (is that a word?) of your experience.

[chalker]

Please keep in mind that there will be something like 300+ different tournaments this season, all over the country. Almost all the people involved in all aspects are volunteers that do this in their spare time. Regionals vary tremendously, from certain ones that have 100-120 different teams in a single division, to ones that might only have half a dozen teams. There is also huge variability in terms of competitiveness between states - some only have a few dozen teams in the whole state, while others have hundreds and hundreds. In general, the State Directors are the ones who are responsible for oversight of regional and state tournaments. I recommend you look up your state director on the national website and consider contacting them.

[Unome]

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[BuildingFriend]

Usually regionals are fine- maybe more questionable tests, testing rigs, and less efficient but should be still functional. Having helped run Cougar Invitational (40 some schools), organizing it is terribly hard and even though we had experience with experienced college competitors and teachers supervising, day of problems always come up. MIT is one of the best tournaments due to experienced coordinators and supervisors (paid!) that know how to do it and have incentive to do well. All in all, at the end of the day the team that fights through it all wins. If you had major problems, contacting the organizers and letting them know is great (your words hold more weight if you're a national contender or well known).

[Unome]

Tarleton Regional Division B

1. Bonham Blue
2. Bonham Silver
3. Prestonwood

Assuming your team went to this regional - it appears to me that the regional is probably not very well-run. They only run 15 events in B (and using some trial events as official events); generally, running less than the full slate is a sign that the tournament is not going to be well-run. In addition, it appears that neither of the schools listed here have qualified for state before. This is usually (but not always) also a sign of a poorly-run tournament. Frequently the strongest teams will be attracted to the best-run tournaments. The blessing and curse here is that while you can choose to go to an uncompetitive regional to try to qualify for state more easily, it is likely going to be not very well-run (though I recommend in favor of this strategy).

tl;dr - your regional is probably uncommonly low-quality.

I can't comment on the Texas state tournament since I know very little about it.

[EastStroudsburg13]

In addition, it appears that neither of the schools listed here have qualified for state before. This is usually (but not always) also a sign of a poorly-run tournament. Frequently the strongest teams will be attracted to the best-run tournaments. The blessing and curse here is that while you can choose to go to an uncompetitive regional to try to qualify for state more easily, it is likely going to be not very well-run (though I recommend in favor of this strategy).

Note; this is why I tend to favor closed regionals; it is more likely to result in an even geographic representation throughout the state, and there is more incentive to help fix one's own regional, as opposed to jumping to other regionals.

However, in PA, participating teams often help run events, which apparently doesn't happen everywhere, so make of what I said however you may.