Boca Raton Community High School

Boca Raton Community High School, commonly shortened to Boca Raton High School or Boca High, is a Division C school located in Boca Raton, Florida. They placed first at their regional tournament and the Florida state tournament for many years in a row, until the 2018 season, where they received a second place at both competitions. Nevertheless, they have attended the National competition since 2010 and have been increasing their scores at the invitational over time. The school's website can be found here.

History
The team was started in the late 2000's, meaning that the team is around 10 years old. During 2009, it attended the Southeast Florida regional, in which it scored 1st, starting a nine-year streak where the team earned a first place medal at the regional tournament. At the state competition, the team scored 6th place. In 2010, the team scored 2nd at the regional tournament, which allowed it to continue to the state tournament, in which it scored 2nd. Due to the second placing, the team was allowed to attend the 2010 Nationals competition.

They won the regional, which moved them on to the state competition. There, they won their first State Science Olympiad competition, which they would continue to do for the next 6 years before 2018.

From 2012 to 2017, the team received first places at both the regional and state competitions. Their Nationals score was slowly increasing, leading up to its peak at the 2017 Nationals competition with a 12th place.

2018 was a very bad year for the team, marking the first time they scored 2nd place at the regionals and state tournament in several years. Additionally, they broke their slowly increasing Nationals score with a 27th place.

Team Setup
The team is coach-run with high stress on equality among members. The majority of preparation is done during after-school gatherings in the coach's classroom on weekdays. Over the weekends, students may meet up together to review their events, including some student-led gatherings at a nearby university.

The entire program consists of 5 teams:


 * Team 1 is the team with students that are considered to be the most hard-working and devoted to Science Olympiad. Thus, Team 1 typically outperforms all of the other teams in the program by varying margins. They are also the team that attends the most invitationals and the team that attends nationals.
 * Team 2 is the team with students that typically perform a little worse than those on Team 1. It is considered a good introductory team for those new to Science Olympiad and serves as a good place for individuals who want to invest some time and effort, but not an insane amount. This teams attends some invitationals, and typically moves on to regionals and states.
 * Teams 3, 4, and 5 are the teams with students that come to Science Olympiad less frequently in the year. These teams typically only attend regionals, but if the team does well then they may attend the state-level competition.

The placement of students on teams is determined mainly by their scores on placement exams that occur usually around the middle to end of September. While these are the main factor, other factors play into the decision as well, such as the events the student is interested in and how often they come after school. It is frequent for students to move up and down teams over the years based on their performance, however, most students do not move during the year unless something severe has happened on a team.

Breaking Records
The school's Team 1 and Team 2 broke the Florida States Competition record, for being the first school to attain both 1st and 2nd place rankings at the 2015 States competition in the Florida Science Olympiad history. However, 3rd place Archimedean Upper Conservatory won 2nd place by default, and went to the 2015 National competition in place of Boca High's Team 2.

Boca Raton had a breakthrough performance at the 2017 Nationals placing 12th from 20th the previous year and decreasing their point total by ~100.

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