Recruiting New Team Members

[JustDroobles]

How do you recruit members for your Science Olympiad team? I would like to know especially for the high school. Most of my team is people who started in middle school and have continued through high school, but obviously along the way a few people drop out. We usually scrape by with enough people to compete; in 2010 we went to state with only 10 people. This year we started the year with around 20 and ended up with 15 by our first invitational. We would love to have more people join so we can have multiple teams at invitationals and give people better chances to compete, as well as having a wider pool and better people from which to choose our competitive team. So I guess there are a couple questions I would like to ask...

How do you make Science Olympiad sound fun and appealing to prospective members?
How do you advertise your team? Is it effective?
Does your team have a lot of people who don't start Science Olympiad until high school? Do these people join because they have friends on the team, because they are interested in S.O., because of the prestige of your school's program, or some other reason?
Do you have other ideas to increase recruitment and team size?

Any input is appreciated.

[fishman100]

I'd say publicize your tournaments. It'll be rough in the beginning, but if you have announcements at your school then they could says something like "<name> and <name> won 1st place in <event>! Congratulations!" or "<name of team> won the Regional Tournament and will be advancing to the State tournament held <location> on <date>! Congratulations!"

...etc. That's what we do. It seems to work

[QuantumLeaper]

I have this problem too. Maybe start telling people who have an interest in science how there are events that deal with different topics, and that there are different event formats (many people seem to go for the building events). I'm trying to recruit people for next year too, since there are 5 people graduating this year.

[winneratlife]

I used to just generally try to put up flyers, make announcements, etc. but that hardly works.

I find it much more effective to ask the science teachers for names of motivated and smart students, and single them out and approach them. This makes them feel important, and really makes them aware that this is a serious thing.

[fishman100]

I have this problem too. Maybe start telling people who have an interest in science how there are events that deal with different topics, and that there are different event formats (many people seem to go for the building events). I'm trying to recruit people for next year too, since there are 5 people graduating this year.

Agreed. When I joined last year, the only event that I was actually interested in was Solar System. then my friend recruited me to Road Scholar, and now this year Bottle/JYC. I think it helps to say that people who aren't really interested in studying can do other things, like building battling bots (SB) or making a trebuchet (StC).

I think friends also help, too.

[EastStroudsburg13]

This is what we do. Use it as an example of what not to do:

Depend on people to come to us.
Put all of the work burden on students and don't give them a starting point.
Don't put up posters or such.
Don't publicize accomplishments by putting them on announcements.

[rocketman1555]

Publicizing tournaments tends to work well as long as you do relatively well at those tournaments.

Free food is a good way to lure people into at least the first meeting.

[EastStroudsburg13]

We were planning on that too. Problem is, how can we advertise "HEY WE HAVE FOOD PLEASE COME" and then not wind up with 40 or so people who have no inclination to work?

[Luo]

It also helps if all of your team members and coaches wear their Science Olympiad shirts all the time and talk about Science Olympiad at every available opportunity. Eventually, people will notice your enthusiasm and perhaps become interested in joining for themselves.

[JustDroobles]

Thanks for the input everyone!

Something I have always had trouble with though is actually making Science Olympiad sound FUN... even if I am not trying to people to join, if somebody asks me what I do I describe how I study and take tests... and I wonder how anyone could ever become interested. So how do you describe what you do in Science Olympiad to make it actually sound like that something enjoyable instead of extra work and studying?