Last Invite Before a Regional

[jgrischow1]

Interested in people's thoughts on this...we are either doing 3 invites or 4...if we do 4 the 4th would be the Saturday before our Regional...is it more valuable to have that extra invite or to have that Saturday before as a work day?

[CookiePie1]

For us, we do two back-to-back invies, and it's pretty stressful on everyone even though they're just invies. So, I would reccomend not doing that with an official competition, unless you are certain that it won't cause you to miss states or anything like that.

[primitivepolonium]

4 isn't an unreasonable number of invites to go to in one season, but IMO it's best to leave the weekend before Regionals/States/Nationals unbooked. Regardless of how competitive is, an invite will take up a lot of time and energy that students may find better applied to last-minute studying, building, and cheat sheet polishing.

[NSCDS3RdCaptain]

We usually go to 3 invites: one in December, January, and February before our regional in early March and State in mid-April. We never do back-to-back competitions of any sort. While the practice gained from a fourth invite is definitely valuable, I would not do this before regionals.

[pb5754]

It really depends on how important regionals is for your team. If you attend a relatively less competitive regional and you are reasonably confident that you will qualify for states, you can probably do it. Both WW-P South and North attended an invite 3 days before regionals (BVF and MIT, respectively) and everything mostly worked out fine.

[Unome]

It really depends on how important regionals is for your team. If you attend a relatively less competitive regional and you are reasonably confident that you will qualify for states, you can probably do it. Both WW-P South and North attended an invite 3 days before regionals (BVF and MIT, respectively) and everything mostly worked out fine.

Concur. Solon regularly attends invitationals on either side of their regionals. I would not recommend attending an invitational close to state though, for the reasons mentioned above.

[AlfWeg]

Yup. Agree with what people have said. My team is pretty much guaranteed a states spot, so we don’t have a problem with going to a invy the week before regionals(We actually did it last year). But I would never want to go to an invy right before states because time is much better used studying. If regionals/everyone -needs-to-be-on their-A-game competition is right around the corner, make the invitational optional. If people think their time is better used studying, then let them. Also, I wouldn’t say back-to-back competitions are that bad. I’ve done that and it’s not as bad as you would think, especially since at least one is an invitational, which probably doesn't matter as much as an official competition.

[pepperonipi]

Yup. Agree with what people have said. My team is pretty much guaranteed a states spot, so we don’t have a problem with going to a invy the week before regionals(We actually did it last year). But I would never want to go to an invy right before states because time is much better used studying. If regionals/everyone -needs-to-be-on their-A-game competition is right around the corner, make the invitational optional. If people think their time is better used studying, then let them. Also, I wouldn’t say back-to-back competitions are that bad. I’ve done that and it’s not as bad as you would think, especially since at least one is an invitational, which probably doesn't matter as much as an official competition.

My school did this last year as well, and things were fine. I'd bet most of my teammates would say attending the invitational was well worth the experience, even if it was the weekend before regionals. Similar to what was said, all schools are different, and if you believe that your team would gain more from studying/preparing the weekend prior, then that may be the best option.

[Name]

Having gone to back to back to back compititions the past two years, by the end of it I was super exhausted, prob didn't prepare as much as the first one, and didn't really enjoy it as much. If your team is worried about not making states then probably don't go. If you care about doing well at states/nats and are confident you can make states, two comps is manageable and is probably worth going to. (Although never go to 3 in a row, bad idea)
Also if your team is the type to never study until the day before a compitition, having one right before regionals might help idk. I think for the most part having that extra comp the week before probably wouldn't hinder your performance, but it prob won't help much either.

[JoeyC]

Building on Name's idea, if your team is the type that only really gets going once they have a week left to the invite, it might be beneficial as long as the events everyone's doing are kept mostly the same.
However, in most situations no, cause stress and overwork