2017 National Tournament: Wright State University

[Unome]

Nice to see that you appear to know what you're talking about with regard to state-specific culture in other parts on the nation (I've spent quite some time over the last three days convincing various members of my team that superscoring event results is not a thing, and it's almost universally common to award team trophies to schools rather than separate teams; many of them were surprised when UGA did the latter). Yeah 18 team members if uncommon; I think perhaps NJ does it (can someone else confirm this one?) and Rustin Invitational in PA allows it (although the rest of the state follows the usual national team qualifications). I've also assumed that NC is generally well-run, so it's nice to hear some substantiation for that.

Superscoring? In NC trophies go to teams and medals go to event pairs. What is superscoring?

Yeah that's the usual everywhere else too. Some people on my team thought that at UGA the team score was the best score in each event among multiple teams from a single school.

[kenniky]

I thought that was the case at my first invite too... bit of a surprise when we placed 5 places lower than I thought we would lol

[lumosityfan]

Unfortunately that isn't the case. Every state has their own schedule for state that may differ from the national schedule. You'll only be able to know for sure when you state schedule for that year is released.

Thanks. I wish it weren't true, but given the difficulties of scheduling such a tournament, I'm not surprised.

I'm not 100% sure about NC's specifics, but looking at last year's state schedule, it looks like a lot of it is similar, but there are still some big differences (like no experimental design I think).

Yeah, no ExpDes, Game On, Robot Arm, or HydroGeo. Plus 4 NC-only events (although for some reason CodeBusters isn't marked as NC only).

Yeah, NC usually replaces 1 or 2 events in Div B, and 4 or 5 in Div C (this really shows in the Div B vs. Div C rankings of NC teams at Nationals).

(In case you aren't already aware, NC Science Olympiad is very unusual in many ways)

"Unusual" is a good way to put it, yes. But our tournaments are always well-run, and we know the people at NCSO work hard for us, so we don't mind the extra events. Our school has learned to make short work of Bottle Rocket, for example, because it's pretty similar every year.

We also are allowed 18 people at states. I'm not sure if that's normal or not, but it means we either have to go to states with a disadvantage or cut 3 people for nats. It's a tough choice.

Nice to see that you appear to know what you're talking about with regard to state-specific culture in other parts on the nation (I've spent quite some time over the last three days convincing various members of my team that superscoring event results is not a thing, and it's almost universally common to award team trophies to schools rather than separate teams; many of them were surprised when UGA did the latter). Yeah 18 team members if uncommon; I think perhaps NJ does it (can someone else confirm this one?) and Rustin Invitational in PA allows it (although the rest of the state follows the usual national team qualifications). I've also assumed that NC is generally well-run, so it's nice to hear some substantiation for that.

I can confirm that NJ does have 18 team members for states and regionals.

[Flavorflav]

Just tried to look at last year's national scores and it said that the owner's subscription had lapsed. Is national not going to use Avogadro any more?

[Adi1008]

Just tried to look at last year's national scores and it said that the owner's subscription had lapsed. Is national not going to use Avogadro any more?

I think they're using Chalker's scoring system at WSU. I think it depends tournament to tournament; at Cornell nationals I'd expect them to use Ezra (Ezra is designed by Science Olympiad at Cornell)

You can see the 2016 tournament information here: https://www.soinc.org/2016_national_tournament

[chalker]

Just tried to look at last year's national scores and it said that the owner's subscription had lapsed. Is national not going to use Avogadro any more?

We've been using my excel based system for many years now. Avogadro was used last year because the State/Tournament Director is to same person that created/runs Avogadro. WSU will obviously use my system this year, and I believe we'll do the same at Colorado next year.

If you are looking for some specific details about last year, I have a complete data dump from Avogadro (which of course is in the form of Excel spreadsheets;)

[Unome]

WSU will obviously use my system this year, and I believe we'll do the same at Colorado next year.

omg the formatting on last year's scoresheet...

[chalker]

WSU will obviously use my system this year, and I believe we'll do the same at Colorado next year.

omg the formatting on last year's scoresheet...

I assume you are talking about the physical handouts available here (https://www.soinc.org/sites/default/fil ... _Div_C.PDF)?

Not so funny story - Avogadro doesn't have a built in way to generate a PDF. All they have is a webpage that you can print out. However, it took us FOREVER to figure out a way to get that webpage to print out to a single PDF sheet instead of breaking across multiple ones. We literally had like 4 people in the scoring room right at the start of the awards ceremony on different computers doing everything we could think of, from screenshots to cutting and pasting. Eventually we figured out a way to use Chrome to change the zoom settings that would translate into a PDF.

[smrt1337]

Unome wrote:
Magikarpmaster629 wrote:
One thing I'd like to mention on here that I don't remember seeing on the thread for last year's nationals, was the music played at the opening and awards ceremonies. I normally dislike the type of music they played (pop), but I really enjoyed it at awards; I wasn't at the 2015 national tournament but I did watch the stream and I can say it would have been easier to watch with something to fill the void in the background. I also liked how a different song was played for each different event. I'd like to see these again at the 2017 awards ceremony.

Agreed; the music last year was great; timing, mood, was all spot on. The opening and awards video recordings were also really well-done (can't speak for the livestream since I didn't watch it ).


Anything to make the awards ceremony more exciting would be cool. The atmosphere they created last year with the music was great, it made everything feel bigger and more important. The camerawork for the livestream was really good as well, it almost felt like I was there.

Definitey agree. I attended both 2015 and 2016 Nationals, and I felt 2016 did a better job of organizing the tournament and creating a good atmosphere in general. The free outdoor wifi all over campus was also appreciated. Hope that Wright State will keep up the good work this year.

Wow maybe I'm just being self-flagellating here, but I thought nats in 2016 could not even begin to compare to 2015. The opening and awards ceremony got so hot, I thought I was going to suffocate and die in there.

[Unome]

Unome wrote:
Magikarpmaster629 wrote:
One thing I'd like to mention on here that I don't remember seeing on the thread for last year's nationals, was the music played at the opening and awards ceremonies. I normally dislike the type of music they played (pop), but I really enjoyed it at awards; I wasn't at the 2015 national tournament but I did watch the stream and I can say it would have been easier to watch with something to fill the void in the background. I also liked how a different song was played for each different event. I'd like to see these again at the 2017 awards ceremony.

Agreed; the music last year was great; timing, mood, was all spot on. The opening and awards video recordings were also really well-done (can't speak for the livestream since I didn't watch it ).


Anything to make the awards ceremony more exciting would be cool. The atmosphere they created last year with the music was great, it made everything feel bigger and more important. The camerawork for the livestream was really good as well, it almost felt like I was there.

Definitey agree. I attended both 2015 and 2016 Nationals, and I felt 2016 did a better job of organizing the tournament and creating a good atmosphere in general. The free outdoor wifi all over campus was also appreciated. Hope that Wright State will keep up the good work this year.

Wow maybe I'm just being self-flagellating here, but I thought nats in 2016 could not even begin to compare to 2015. The opening and awards ceremony got so hot, I thought I was going to suffocate and die in there.

There are definitely things that I thought were better in 2015 - the tournament program booklet and (as you mentioned) the heat during opening/awards come to mind - but I found almost everything else better in 2016 (do you remember the types of music they played in 2015?)