How to do well? Preparation tips & competition tips?

[belle]

Hey! I know that a lot of us are competitors here, but is anybody willing to give suggestions regarding team improvement? What made your team see the most improvement/stay great/etc.? Should a team try to go to a lot of invitationals to get really good or focus their efforts elsewhere? We didn't go to a lot of invitationals last year, but we went to about 4 in a row every weekend, and we found it hard to tweak our building devices or binders to accommodate the missing knowledge/factors of the building projects. Any suggestions?

I'm just looking for any suggestions for how to rank at competitions/how to place in general? Thank you so much! Any tips are appreciated!

[belle]

I haven't competed for too long, so this is from my personal experience as a competitor, being on a team and interactions with other competitors. This is just my opinion, so don't completely take my word for it.

I think that one thing that is key for team improvement for any team is motivation. If your team is really motivated to do Science Olympiad and improve, then they will most likely do better at tournaments and place more, and if this team motivation stays, then your team will probably continue doing better. The reason I feel this is true is because if your team members are motivated to improve more, then they will put in more time and effort to make this a reality.

Regarding going to a lot of invitationals, they help you build experience and are a great practice for your team, but an excessive amount is not really needed in my opinion. As long as your team is trying its best at each and every invitational and working hard, I think that team results won't be affected as much as far as going to less invitationals. Spacing them out a little more (more time between invitationals) would help a little bit also, because this would give your team more time to put in more effort and make any changes that might need to for builds, binders, etc.

Again, I just wanted to reiterate that this is just my opinion based off of what I've experienced.

[belle]

I'm not going to say much, but for the invitational thing, going to more than 3-ish isn't going to help you much unless you're already a powerhouse looking to see how you measure up against other top teams and make small changes to events. I suggest going to one easy invitational in order to boost self esteem and provide motivation for medals, and one harder-but-not-impossible invitational to experience something bigger and get inspired by the top teams (bigger/more competitive invitationals also may have better tests).
I'd say going to invitationals about a month apart is good because it gives you plenty of time to improve. AMake sure you don't have an invitational right before regionals, give yourself a few weeks to make final preparations - you don't want to realize the week before regionals that your build doesn't work.