Team Selection

[iwonder]

This goes right along with recruiting new members... How do you guys pick team members? Historically we've had anyone that wanted to go to our invite(we host one of the first invites in the country, I believe) and we look at individual results to see who performed best, but I've also heard of teams that have all members take tests over the events and choose teams from that.

So what methods have you heard of or may have worked best. Any suggestions for us? Thanks.

[Rohaigirl]

If we're small enough, we just go over every person's name in the team and say yes or no to them depending on who's responsible, who's shown up to most of the work days, who's proven that they're a hard, dedicated worker. We've gotten in the habit of sending about three teams, so one team is usually a mostly-seniors/people who have been with us the longest team.

Early on in the year, we sort people into four to six events that they've expressed interest in, and they study and work in those events until teams are chosen and events are narrowed down to two or three per person. We choose teams by having a mock exam day in which we come up with competition-style written tests and throw them at people who are in those general events. We don't do the team selection until later in the year, because we want to establish a bit of the SciOly spirit among everyone that encourages the people who aren't on one of the teams to still come and help out with building events and quizzing as much as possible.

[awesome90220]

Make extra teams

[chia]

Many suggestions and more discussion from a thread which was started a while back, here: How does your school do tryouts for the competition team?

In the past we've had competitive tryouts as I might have mentioned somewhere in that old thread, but this year we're trying something a little different, more in the vein of what Rohaigirl's team sounds like, I guess? To get people a) excited about their events before they even start to study for them and b) in events which they will remain excited about, we're holding off on any sort of qualification testing until several weeks after our first meeting to gauge interest better, and not have nearly as intense/binding tryouts tests as we did last year. We do have every member fill out a form about previous SO experience and what math and science classes they have taken/are taking in high school, which is used mostly for specific event placement and maybe a tiebreaker if we're really stuck on who should be in that 15th spot.

Make extra teams

This still leaves open the question of who gets put on which team...

[Skink]

Make extra teams

This is state-dependent. In some states (including IL), you can have as many teams as you can pay for unless there's an upper limit placed by the competition (this is all prior to State, of course). Bear in mind, there's not really any sense in fielding more than three full 15-person teams, a Varsity and two JVs.
In other states, there are no JV or B teams.

[49ers]

Run-offs worked best at my school. Basically you compete either in a pair or individually on a test we take from the test exchange or a student/advisor created test never taken by anyone there before. Best scores get first chancce at event, but if conflicts arise, alternates are put in.

[silverheart7]

Make extra teams

This is state-dependent. In some states (including IL), you can have as many teams as you can pay for unless there's an upper limit placed by the competition (this is all prior to State, of course). Bear in mind, there's not really any sense in fielding more than three full 15-person teams, a Varsity and two JVs.
In other states, there are no JV or B teams.

We may be crazy, but for Regionals we do Teams A, B, C, D, and E. Team A is our tentative Varisty team which is normally modified after Regionals.

[knittingfrenzy18]

We haven't had problems with more than 15 people wanting to do it, being a homeschool group, like we'd have 1 backup, but this year we have more and may be forming a smaller B team

[awesome90220]

Make extra teams

This is state-dependent. In some states (including IL), you can have as many teams as you can pay for unless there's an upper limit placed by the competition (this is all prior to State, of course). Bear in mind, there's not really any sense in fielding more than three full 15-person teams, a Varsity and two JVs.
In other states, there are no JV or B teams.

We may be crazy, but for Regionals we do Teams A, B, C, D, and E. Team A is our tentative Varisty team which is normally modified after Regionals.

We've got A,B,C,D, and E for Drake, and A, B, and C for the Junior High. You think your crazy?

[cupcakegirl]

Wow...
At my school, we have a tryout at the end of the year for next year's team. Only kids who will be going into 7th or 8th grade are allowed to tryout (and of course any 9th graders who want to come back ). The tryout test is usually just a high school general science test and then there's also an interview portion so the coaches can get a general idea of who is interested in what kinds of events. In the past, we have had 2 teams of 15 (A and B) selected from about 130-200 or so who tryout. This year, however, we have three teams (A, B, and C), and we're still waiting to see if Texas will even let us have three teams competing in invites and regionals.... it's pretty amazing that you have been allowed to have 5 teams....

This method works pretty well because people really want to get on our team since it is so competitive, and so they work hard during the year...