What happened to SciOly?

[pumptato-cat]

I've noticed that the amount of people on forums has dropped by 1,100. That's no small number. Also, as a vet of my div. B team from 2020-2022, the new 6th graders and other JV kids have been just less interested in STEM. Why is this happening? I do understand that COVID more or less shut down SciOly for 2ish years, and the amount of teams participating shrunk drastically. It makes me sad to see this, because in 2019, my school's team was ~50 people and one of the largest clubs in the school-loads of people showed up to practices and were so dedicated and passionate. Now, as I'm going into Div. C, my old team has shrunk to around 30 people. It seems like a lot, but SO at my old school was an elective, so most people were there because they were forced to. Also, the forums are pretty much dead, ~14000 posts less than what they used to be. Competitions have gotten much less competitive, and I'm wondering: Have you guys experienced this in other states and schools? And what happened to SciOly? It's sad to watch-I hope scioly goes back to the way I remembered 3 years ago.

[Jehosaphat]

Hey Pumptato-Cat! I absolutely understand where you are coming from. It does sadden me to look at Scioly and see how the posts are down, new members seem to be mostly bots, and the passion I used to see other competitors have for Science Olympiad die out, but this is not a Science Olympiad issue alone. COVID absolutely wrecked the public school system. Things are still not back to how they were, and they never will be, including the students affected by COVID. The number of missed experiences across the world for so many people will forever change the way our generation grows up and sees the world. But Science Olympiad has been affected even more severely by the shutdown than other activities, and it comes down to the commitment.

A pattern I have seen in Science Olympiad is that it all depends on a good coach, because without a good coach, a team does not really exist. In my hometown in western Michigan, my school was next door to Grandville and Jenison, who if you look back at past national champions, took victory year after year. But these teams hardly exist now, as when the coach retired, nobody was there to take up the burden of coaching. This applies to students as well, as when I coach events now, students lack the wisdom that only years in Science Olympiad can give you, and the endurance to run the race all year long. So when COVID struck, many coaches just never formed a team, and breaking that reliability of coming back year after year only made it easier to come back once the coast was clear. Same for the students, when Science Olympiad dropped out of the picture, I am sure many went to find other things to do, made new friends, and Science Olympiad just was not back in the picture yet. I am fortunate to live in Michigan, which lightened up enough that we could have in-person competition all last year, but we still had a 50% drop in registration, a much heavier drop in competitiveness, and we were unable to even fill a state tournament. I cannot imagine how rough it has been in other states where they could not be in person. The magic of Science Olympiad for me has always been feeding off of other student's passion for science, and that has compelled me to love STEM even more.

As for Scioly.org, I am not sure. Forums are just less popular now then they have been, and it is difficult to jump in and start talking to random people online. I am sure that as Science Olympiad recovers, so will Scioly, but each student still needs to take the steps to get involved online. There is a weird attitude to the internet that everything there just was there, nobody really had to create something new. This is a discussion I see often about the wiki, as people as for pages to be updated when that really means that someone has to step up and do the research.

I still love Science Olympiad, and I am optimistic that it will return to its former glory. It is most certainly entering a new stage of its lifetime, but that is happening for everything right now. The best hope for it is for people like you to show your passion and love for this, and others will follow. It is how I created my team in high school, and it is how I hope to create a tournament of my own in the near future. Good luck!

[pumptato-cat]

I agree with what you said about coaches, but it also depends heavily on the students. My Div. B coach was passionate and he truly loved SciOly and his kids. Now, as the class of '26, '25, '24, leaves div b, he's really struggling with the current students. They just don't have the same passion that some people on here used to have. Sometimes I wonder if SciOly will ever go back to the way things used to be. Of course I hope it will, but could I really say that it'll go back to its former glory?

To anyone reading this and hesitant to join the forums, please do. I lurked around for 1 year reading posts after SciOly got wrecked by COVID and I am so sad that I never got the chance to join discussions from the 2010s. So much good information, so many wonderful people, and they've all left now. The forum's full of bots and accounts from 2008. It's truly sad to watch and I hope that people revive SciOly to where it used to be. SciOly's been my life for 3 years, and it's gotten me through quarantine, given me a purpose to keep working, and helped me find my fellow nerds. I hope others can find the same joy that it has brought to me.

Jehosaphat, thank you for your comment. :) Good luck to you too!

[LittleMissNyan]

^^exactly this- when I was in my middle school team there was a decent balance of 6th and 7th graders, with a few 8th graders sprinkled in. Now it seem like post-Covid teams at that school have consisted of mostly "6th graders who don't care" (as Pipop puts it) and only like 5 with any experience or motivation- and they might not even have the team this year because they can't get a coach! Covid killed off the high school team outright and seems to have slowly choked the middle school one, and since these teams have failed so recently people might not think it's worth it to try and reestablish them so soon. It'll take a while to get that motivation back up again.

I will say that a lot of the casual conversation on scioly.org seems to have moved to the Discord server, but it's certainly a different experience compared to the forums. Discord seems to fall more squarely into 'social networking' range compared to the forums, and so access will likely be more restricted compared to a forums site. There's a bunch more cool event-geared stuff here though, like the wiki and question marathons- don't feel like you can't participate because you don't know what you're doing! Neither do we! No one's going to judge you, we're all learning here (:
that goes for the assassination games as well, if anyone wants to be the new assassinator please DM me all my picks have fallen through

[knightmoves]

Things aren't "back to normal" yet. The number of invitationals in our area is significantly reduced compared to pre-Covid (maybe about half) and most of our teams have never been to an in-person competition at all.

Like pumptato-cat said, kids seem to come in waves: my middle school's team had a couple of good years, then the core experienced people moved on to C and there weren't many new kids that year. This year they have quite a lot more interest, but it's all sixth graders, so we'll see how well they do.

Science Olympiad takes a significant investment of effort - from team members, from their families, and from coaches. And it takes a whole bunch of organizational effort to pll that together.

Covid made things hard for all sorts of reasons - it's hard to keep a team going, or draw in new people, when you can't meet in person. Doing competitions from an empty school on a Saturday isn't nearly as motivating as running around with a thousand other kids. And, frankly, everything was just a bit harder, between masking, modifications for distancing, and a whole layer of worrying about Covid that a lot of people just didn't have the extra capacity to devote to scioly.

[theskyistillred]

Hi PumptatoCat,

I definitely agree with some of the points made above, and some of yours.

The number of students trying out / participating has definitely dwindled. However, one thing I did notice in my school district, perhaps contrary to some points mentioned above, is that the past 2 years have filtered out all the kids who aren't serious, and instead, all the people who truly love science and science olympiad are the ones coming to tryouts. In fact, probably about 90% of people who are trying out, or were in the team last season, have at least 1 year of prior experience, and the remaining 10% are really interested in science and have a lot of knowledge. Speaking as a freshman, I feel this applies to our district's B teams and C teams. Anyway, our teams are normally at most 20 people, and scioly is a "club", so I may be slightly biased there. So while there have been many negative effects of the past 2 years, there have also been some arguably good ones.

As for comps getting less competitive, I would argue that this may be influenced by the fact that they were virtual. It is one experience to go on a bus or aircraft, in your team swag, with your mates, and take a test with your partner, speaking in rushed whispers as the clock counts down. But what has happened in the last 2 years is sitting on your couch, texting your partner over the laggy in-test chat. I think that virtual test, the lack of the tension, the pressure, might contribute to the feeling of a reduction in competition. Tests are harder than ever, at least in my experience, so that is probably not it.

Yeah, the number of teams participating has gone down :(

Also, if you check out the discord, there is a lot of activity there! So while this site's activity has definitely gone down, the communication between competitors is still there.

So while things are not yet back to normal, and SciOly.org is starting to become kinda dead, with the return of in-person tournaments this season, maybe we'll see an improvement in all of these!

Cheers!

[pumptato-cat]

Thanks for your comment! I'm also a freshman, and you definitely have a point about the newer students coming in, but when I compare the 6th graders in 2019 to the current ones on my old team?... *sigh*
What you said is definitely true, but unfortunately is not the case for all teams.
Yep, in NC, you can cram the night before and place at states. It's very sad. I remember how hard medaling used to be and by the time I got to 8th grade, it was so easy that my medals didn't feel like an accomplishment. Whether this is partly due to my improvements as a competitor, or a decrease in competitiveness, I'm not sure, but it really ruined states for me. Yeah, the tests are insane. I failed the anatomy test so hard this year
I hope the forums start going back to normal Thank you so much everyone for your contribution. It's nice to know that I'm not the only person out here.

[knightmoves]

However, one thing I did notice in my school district, perhaps contrary to some points mentioned above, is that the past 2 years have filtered out all the kids who aren't serious, and instead, all the people who truly love science and science olympiad are the ones coming to tryouts. In fact, probably about 90% of people who are trying out, or were in the team last season, have at least 1 year of prior experience, and the remaining 10% are really interested in science and have a lot of knowledge. Speaking as a freshman, I feel this applies to our district's B teams and C teams. Anyway, our teams are normally at most 20 people, and scioly is a "club", so I may be slightly biased there. So while there have been many negative effects of the past 2 years, there have also been some arguably good ones.

I don't think science olympiad can survive with just the hardcore ubernerds. I'm happy being an ubernerd, but most of science olympiad is not the teams that are trying to get to nationals, or even the teams who finish respectably at state each year. If science olympiad is going to survive, and to attract support, it needs to be about widening access, and showing more people that they can be excited about science (particularly at the B level, but it's also true for C).

[pumptato-cat]

Definitely true. I've noticed that a lot of my classmates avoided doing scioly in div. b because they thought they weren't "smart enough" or "nerdy"... I guess scioly doesn't have the best reputation to non-nerds and probably looks more complicated than it is. Hopefully that will change :(
(funny story: I hated science with a passion until 6th grade(and was obsessed with going to the national spelling bee) because i thought i was too stupid to understand it or whatever. now it's my favorite subject because of scioly-bye, spelling bee! it was fun but i'd rather be building a plane than studying word etymology 🙃)

[onshape]

Definitely true. I've noticed that a lot of my classmates avoided doing scioly in div. b because they thought they weren't "smart enough" or "nerdy"... I guess scioly doesn't have the best reputation to non-nerds and probably looks more complicated than it is. Hopefully that will change
(funny story: I hated science with a passion until 6th grade(and was obsessed with going to the national spelling bee) because i thought i was too stupid to understand it or whatever. now it's my favorite subject because of scioly-bye, spelling bee! it was fun but i'd rather be building a plane than studying word etymology )

I'm new to SciOly and totally agree! The reason I personally hated science in 5th grade was because I had to memorize 2/3 of the things I learned in middle school. By middle school, science was such a breeze because of that and SciOly helps balance that now that I'm in HS. It's definitely interesting when I'm going through things such as Environmental Chemistry because Honors Bio is such a breeze (: (By the way, I'm the opposite! Competition is so close and I feel like I'm addicted to the Scioly forums by now)