2020 Rustin's 9th annual (B-div) Invitational

[lavarball]

I found it a little weird how team’s in AAA were affected by teams being in AA. For example, Eagle View was 5th overall with bala right behind them (if you take one team per school). However, bala got 5th in ranking because the AA teams were taken out of that scoring. There must have been events where an AA team places in between the two, but the AA team was removed from that ranking because of the division split. I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting this but the split between the two divisions seemed strange.

[xopherirvin]

I found it a little weird how team’s in AAA were affected by teams being in AA. For example, Eagle View was 5th overall with bala right behind them (if you take one team per school). However, bala got 5th in ranking because the AA teams were taken out of that scoring. There must have been events where an AA team places in between the two, but the AA team was removed from that ranking because of the division split. I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting this but the split between the two divisions seemed strange.

I was confused about this, too, at first. Think of it as two separate tournaments, a AA tournament and a AAA tournament. That's how the awards were presented. When AA teams are separated entirely from the AAA, the overall scores and rankings are different than if you view Rustin as one tournament.

I applaud the tournament director for being bold enough to try something new.

[GoldenKnight1]

It was my goal to create an invitational model that would make our competition approachable to teams at all levels. While I love having highly competitive teams at our invitational, I have heard enough feedback from teams trying to get off the ground that they needed something different. At the Boyceville Invitational I got to see this AA/AAA model and how it could work.

For all of you looking results or to have something to upload to Unosmium, the AA, AAA, and combined Master results can be found here.

Finally, to aid teams all over the country who want another set of good tests and keys, our invitational materials can be found here. I don't want money, geography, or any other factor to be what holds you back from getting better at science and hopefully love it the way I do. Feel free to share this link anywhere. My hope is that we can move away from a model where it just depends on who you know that determines the tests you can get. I applaud UT Austin for showing me the way for this. It took me awhile to come around but I do believe it is the right thing to do.

[coopsadoodles]

i know in past years they've given out raw scores, are they doing that this year?

[GoldenKnight1]

i know in past years they've given out raw scores, are they doing that this year?

Those were emailed to head coaches.

[EastStroudsburg13]

I found it a little weird how team’s in AAA were affected by teams being in AA. For example, Eagle View was 5th overall with bala right behind them (if you take one team per school). However, bala got 5th in ranking because the AA teams were taken out of that scoring. There must have been events where an AA team places in between the two, but the AA team was removed from that ranking because of the division split. I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting this but the split between the two divisions seemed strange.

I was confused about this, too, at first. Think of it as two separate tournaments, a AA tournament and a AAA tournament. That's how the awards were presented. When AA teams are separated entirely from the AAA, the overall scores and rankings are different than if you view Rustin as one tournament.

I applaud the tournament director for being bold enough to try something new.

Illinois does something similar. This sort of minor discrepancy in rankings is relatively normal. With PA establishing "team levels" this year, I think this was a great year to try something like this at the invitational level. I was active at the time that Rustin first started hosting invitationals, and while I wasn't at the first one, I assisted with Boomilever at the second one with JTL (blast from the past there), and I'm always impressed at how consistently high-quality the tournament is, and that's a credit to the staff running it (especially GoldenKnight!).

As a second point, as a longtime champion of having more public resources out there, I'm thrilled at the decision to make materials from the tournament public. As I've gotten older, I've become a bit more sympathetic towards schools putting on tournaments, as they're in a tough place; not only are they competing with university-run invitationals for attendance, but they usually run the tournaments as fundraisers to help their teams during the season, whereas university organizations' full efforts go towards the tournament. They're already at a bit of a disadvantage there, so it makes sense that coaches would have some trepidation about making their materials public. However, I truly believe that the greatest way to attract teams to an invitational is by having it be well-run and reliable, and by doing so, there will always be teams that see value in that. I do not expect every tournament to make their full test sets public, but if every tournament could just make one or two events available, it would expand the resource pool tremendously. And, plus, tests can be a great sneak peek at what the tournament is like, so there's some free advertising!

Going forward, I hope that the community embraces this, and that teams will support tournaments that make materials public. I know private trading is rampant and that there are people out there with 50, 70, even 100 sets of tests, and I've made my opinion about those who propagate such an expansive system known. But maybe, we can gradually shift to a place open sharing is more normal, and someone from a new team has access to plenty of materials without needing to find a "black market of tests".

PS: I consider raw scores to be a different subject when it comes to sharing. By and large, I do not think any invitational should feel the need to make raw scores public. Even a score distribution should be taken as a gift.