Indiana Science Olympiad

Post by **dickyjones** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:52 pm

This topic is for anyone in Indiana to discuss Science Olympiad or really anything that's happening in our wonderful midwestern state.

To start things off:
Purdue University has recently started a grant program for Science Olympiad teams in Indiana. Grants of up to $500 will be given "based on perceived need, first year teams, proximity to Purdue University, and effort to sustain participation in the future." For any schools that have been considering starting a science olympiad program but have been struggling with finding the financial means to pursue it, this could be a good start to funding their own teams. Information can be found on the Indiana Science Olympiad website and the application is here. The deadline to apply is October 31 (registration forms for SO are due October 27!) so make sure to notify your coaches about this opportunity. If you know any other students or teachers from other schools interested in funding or starting a science olympiad team, please tell them about this opportunity. The more teams Indiana has; the greater its chances of retaining its two teams at nats are!

In other news...our call out meeting is tommorow! Any other teams going to start practicing soon? Or any expectations or opinions about this coming season?

detectiveohara · Post by **detectiveohara** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:06 pm

Wow! I hadn't heard about the grant program, which is pretty bad since my brother goes to Purdue. xD

I'll have to tell our coach so she can spread the word. (If she doesn't already know)

adam124218 · Post by **adam124218** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:41 pm

Bloomington North has already started practicing. Our teacher-sponsor decided we should get a really early start this year so we got a really early start--we've been organizing and starting to get people working on events for 3 or 4 weeks now. We ought to have a coach this week, which is exciting. I have a feeling this trend of a new coach every year is going to continue for a long time. The current sponsor doesn't want to commit to being the full-time coach and no other teacher wants to share the responsibility with him despite our having a really successful team, which is moderately ridiculous, but whatever. We will survive. We had a new coach last year too and did perfectly well.

I'm looking forward to competition time this year!

adam124218 · Post by **adam124218** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:33 pm

Alright, Indiana. This thread is looking pretty sad. Let's see if this board will let me double-post.

Has anyone/everyone else heard about this "wild-card" tournament they're having? Apparently, they're taking the teams which missed state by one place and having a wild card tournament with them and I guess a few of the nine teams get a berth at state. I think this is a nice idea, but the one thing that concerns me highly is, with this tournament taking place two weeks before state, are they going to wait until after that happens to assign team numbers for state? That would leave us with very little time to take care of event conflicts and everything for state and that would be a serious bummer. Does anyone know anything about this? I'm thinking of asking our coach to email whoever is in charge on the state level to ask about that.

Post by **dudeincolorado** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:50 pm

well if i was a tornement director i would assign numbers to the teams that made it then give the wild card teams numbers after that so like the teams that made it to state for sure would be 1-25 and then the wild card teams would be 26-32

adam124218 · Post by **adam124218** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 6:04 pm

I would certainly hope that's what they'll do, but I'm worried they won't. We'll see...

Post by **dickyjones** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 6:25 pm

Yeah, I'd think they'd do it like dude said, but you never know.

That's actually a really cool idea. Maybe we'll have to aim for fourth at regionals so we can participate.

The only think I really want right now is for the tentative state schedule to come out so it's easier to organize the events.

So how's practicing going? Our team's sending two teams to regionals/invites for the first time ever since we have 28 people practicing as opposed to the usual 20ish. But the season's starting somewhat slow since we have a lot of new people, while before we had more or less the same team for three years so we could get started a bit quicker. Some events right now seem meh, but they should get cleaned up after the team gets picked. I'm hopeful that we'll have a good season.

adam124218 · Post by **adam124218** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:21 pm

dickyjones wrote:Maybe we'll have to aim for fourth at regionals so we can participate.

That had occurred to me too. We should try to get fourth at our regional to get extra competition experience. We wouldn't actually do it, certainly, but it seems like we should get an extra competition too. We never get invited to invitationals...One year, we almost went to one, but it was canceled because of a snow storm.

Congrats on sending two teams this year. It seemed like we might have over 30 for regionals this year, but every year it gets down to 28 or so and it's clear that's going to happen again this year.

I'm compulsively checking the Purdue regional website for a tentative schedule. I would love for them to release a schedule plenty early.

Good luck, Valpo. I would love for us to both get to go to Nationals again this year.

Post by **theoneandonly** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 10:38 pm

adam124218 wrote:Good luck, Valpo. I would love for us to both get to go to Nationals again this year.

That would be absolutely incredible. I wish you guys the best of luck.

I've heard that there may be some competition changes at Regionals and possibly State. I'm a little bit out of the loop; has anyone else heard anything?

adam124218 · Post by **adam124218** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 1:13 pm

What kind of competition changes? I haven't heard anything about that.

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