Badger Invitational
| Badger Invitational | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Information | ||||||||||
| Map |
Coordinates: 43°04′23″N 89°24′04″W / 43.0731°N 89.4012°W | |||||||||
| Year started | 2012, 2018, 2024 | |||||||||
| Total teams | 52 | |||||||||
| Division | B/C | |||||||||
| Date | March 14, 2026 | |||||||||
| Division B Results | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| Division C Results | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
The Badger Invitational is an Invitational hosted at Hamilton Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, with the help of Madison West High School. It is a Division B and C invitational which does not require attending teams to provide tests. It typically draws teams from around Wisconsin as well as Illinois and Minnesota, but has seen teams attending from as far as Iowa, Indiana, and South Dakota. Due to COVID, the invite was not run in 2022 or 2023, but resumed in 2024 and will continue into the future.
History
From 2012 to 2014, the UW-Madison Invitational was the primary Science Olympiad invitational in Madison. As well as the name UW-Madison Invitational, the competition would be known as the Badger Invitational at times. Teams would come from surrounding states to attend this invitational, but it was unfortunately cut short due to an elimination of funding from the UW-Madison College of Engineering. The idea of a Science Olympiad invitational in Madison lay dormant for the next three years.
On a classic Wisconsin winter day in early 2016, the Hamilton Middle School team was gathered at their school, ready to board their bus to the Grayslake Invitational. The team was left confused when the bus they needed to get there did not show up for one hour, then two hours, until they eventually could not reasonably attend the competition. A call to the bus company revealed a clerical error: The bus company thought Hamilton needed a bus at 5:00 PM, when they had actually ordered one for 5:00 AM.
With Hamilton already having paid to attend the competition, the Grayslake Invitational made an offer: They would send the tests to Madison for one team to take. Hamilton would take the tests and send the scores to Grayslake, and they would return event placements and any of the appropriate medals they had left over. Hamilton took the offer, and thus started the first competition run at the school. With a full schedule and mock awards ceremony, the Hamilton team completed their tests. While their scores did not count for the official results of the invitational, it gave them experience in running a competition. The next year, the Hamilton In-House, a planned internal competition similar in style to an actual invitational was run in preparation for the grand opening in 2018.
In 2018, Hamilton and West announced the opening of the second iteration of the Badger Invitational. The debut competition was a rousing success, with teams from all over Wisconsin and Illinois traveling to Madison to attend. Appropriately, both host schools took first place in their divisions. This paved the way for four years of uninterrupted Badger Invitational, which by the end had begun to attract some of the area's top schools. In 2021, a Satellite version of Badger was run, which attracted over 100 teams from all over the Midwest to compete. Unfortunately, due to the lapse of hosting and the effects of COVID on the program, Badger was placed on hiatus for the following two years.
At the end of the 2023 season, preparation began on the third iteration of the Badger Invitational. The focus was shifted to getting tests from independent writers to lessen the burden on attending teams. Once writers were lined up, it became possible to announce the 2024 Badger Invitational, which took place on February 10, 2024. A highly successful 2024 tournament led to the renewal of the tournament for its next iteration in 2025. The 2025 tournament was the most successful Badger Invitational to date. With 52 total teams, this was the largest in-person Badger Invitational tournament since 2018. Teams in both divisions attended from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.
The 2026 Badger Invitational is currently scheduled for March 14, 2026, and aims to draw teams from even more states.
Results
Division B
Division C
Tournament Scoresheets
External Links
Tournaments of Wisconsin | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invitationals |
|  | ||||||||||||
| Regionals |
| |||||||||||||
| States | ||||||||||||||
| Nationals | ||||||||||||||
State Website: https://www.wisconsinso.org/ | ||||||||||||||