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.

2008-2010: Early Beginnings
The team was started in the late 2000s, meaning that the team is around ten years old. The official season that Boca High started could not be found, but it was likely 2008. In 2008, the team was much smaller and had little experience in Science Olympiad. However, team members put in adequate amounts of work when preparing for their events and Boca High ended up getting 6th place at their regional tournament, the Southeast Florida Regional hosted at the nearby Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Considering that Boca High was a new team who turned a 6th place at one of their first regional tournaments showed that the team was ambitious and ready to overcome challenges. Despite their success as a first team, the 6th place was not sufficient to qualify the team for the state competition that year. Nevertheless, Boca continued to study into the 2009 season.

The 2009 season showed that Boca High was preparing better and more efficiently in terms of their events. They continued to study for their events, motivated by their 6th place score at the previous regional. While Boca's improvement overall was not noticeable in the early part of the year, it showed in their placing at their regional tournament in 2009 - a 1st place. Since they placed first at the regional competition, they were able to move onto the state tournament in that year, marking the team's likely first state tournament (no certain conclusion can be drawn due to a lack of data). At the state tournament, Boca High scored a 6th place. While this did not qualify the team for the national-level tournament, it was an incredible score for the team's (likely) first state-level competition. Similar to 2008, Boca High's scores would motivate them to continue in Science Olympiad into the 2010 season.

In 2010, the team began its year like previous years, by continuously studying until the regional tournament. Like 2009, it was able to score 1st at the regional-level tournament at Florida Atlantic University. As the 2010 Florida state tournament rolled around, the team had been vigorously studying material in preparation. Due to this, Boca High was able to score a 2nd place at the 2010 Florida state tournament. They had fallen behind Gulf Breeze High School, which scored 146, while Boca High scored a 234 - a difference of almost 100 points. While there was a significant difference between the scores of Boca High and Gulf Breeze, this would not stop them from pursuing the state-level tournament in the future.

Additionally, since they received a 2nd place at the state-level tournament, the team was allowed to head to the 2010 National tournament - likely the first Nationals tournament Boca High had ever attended. At the tournament, the team scored a 51st place, with over 1,000 points. This result was not too good of a score, considering that there were 60 teams at the Nationals tournament that year. Since it was their first Nationals competition, the team's score was not looked upon so poorly throughout Boca High. It offered Boca High to improve, which they would do for a great deal of time to come.

2011-2014: Improving Scores
In 2011, Boca Raton Community High School won both the regional-level tournament and state-level tournament for the first time in its history. This of course allowed the team to continue to the 2011 Nationals tournament, where they would score 38th with 829 points - a large improvement from the previous year.

Boca High was able to continue the pattern of scoring 1st at both the regional-level and state-level tournaments for many years, until 2018. It is during this period that Archimedean Upper Conservatory began to emerge as a competitor at both the regional and state tournament. The school from Miami was slowly improving, but they never won the regional-level or state-level tournament until 2018 because of Boca High's competitive nature, which caused them to consistently win the 1st place at both tournaments.

Boca High also had a pair of team members place in an event at Nationals for the first time at the 2012 National Tournament at the University of Central Florida, coincidentally enough. While it was a landmark achievement for Boca High to have won their first individual placing, it was also an achievement because it was Boca High's first 1st place individual placing. The pair placed in Water Quality with a 1st place. Boca High would also place in Water Quality in 2013 and 2014, with 2nd and 5th places, respectively.

2015 - Present: Invitationals and Nationals Placements
See Also: 

In 2015, Boca High attended its first invitational, the MIT Invitational, with both Team 1 and Team 2. At this invitational, Boca High Team 1 earned a 13th place (with 158 points) and Team 2 earned a 29th place (with 304). Later that year, they also attended the Cypress Falls Invitational. Here, they earned their first placement at an invitational tournament, earning a 4th place and a score of 252. These were the only 2 invitationals that Boca High attended in 2015. Through 2017, the team did not attend more than two invitationals per year. However, in 2018, the team attended 4 invitationals. In 2019, they repeated this practice.

Also, since 2015, members of Boca High have received countless medals at the Nationals tournaments over the year. In 2015, members of the team received individual awards in 3 events. In 2016 and 2017, members of the team received individual placements in 5 events. These years showed a great increase in the number of awards given to individual competitors, as at the 2014 National tournament, the team only received an individual placement in one event.

In 2018, the team did not do as well as they had done in the years before. The team's invitational scores were not all that bad, but the team lost some streaks it had in the regional and state tournament. This included the team getting a 2nd place at the regional competition and the state tournament, breaking two long-lasting streaks. Nevertheless, the team still managed to make a 27th place at Nationals.

In the 2019 season, the team did spectacular. They placed at multiple invitationals (including the MIT, Penn, and Northview invitationals) and won 1st place at the state-level tournament. Despite this, the team lost to Archimedean Upper Conservatory, another competitive school, at the regional tournament by a margin of 2 points.

Invitationals
Boca Raton began to attend invitationals in 2015, starting with the MIT Invitational, where they brought both Team 1 and Team 2. They also decided to also attend the Cypress Falls Invitational the same year with Team 1 only. They found relatively good success at these invitationals, including placing 4th overall at Cypress Falls. These were the only 2 invitational competitions that the team attended in 2015. Since 2015, the team has consistently attended the MIT Invitational, however, the team has not attended Cypress Falls since their visit in 2015.

In 2016, the team chose to attend the Cornell Invitational, along with the MIT Invitational. They brought both Team 1 and Team 2 to both invitationals. While neither team was able to place at the MIT Invitational, Team 1 placed 3rd overall at the Cornell Invitational. It appears that the team did not think too poorly of the Cornell Invitational, attending again in 2018.

In 2017, Boca Raton tried the Golden Gate Invitational with Team 1, along with taking both teams to the MIT Invitational as usual. Team 1 placed 6th overall at the Golden Gate Invitational, but neither team placed at the MIT Invitational again. Like Cornell, the team appeared to enjoy the Golden Gate Invitational, since it returned in 2019. However, getting to the Golden Gate Invitational can be quite a hassle for the team, since it is located in California, almost all the way across the country.

In 2018, the team attended 4 invitationals for the first time. This included bringing Team 1 to the Northview Invitational and the Princeton Invitational for the first time, as well. Both teams were taken to MIT and Cornell. Even though this was not the team's best year, Team 1 did manage to place 6th overall at the Cornell Invitational.

In 2019, the team attended 4 invitationals again. This year, they tried the Penn Invitational, taking both teams. Boca Raton was very good at the invitationals it attended, with Team 1 placing at all invitationals. The placements earned by Team 1 included three 2nd places (Northview, MIT, and Golden Gate) and one 6th place (Penn).

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 that attends every tournament, including all invitationals, the regional tournament, state tournament, and national tournament.
 * Team 2 is considered a good introductory team for those new to Science Olympiad and hope to advance in the future. This teams attends some invitationals, as well as the regional tournament and state tournament.
 * Teams 3, 4, and 5 are the teams that often only attend regionals, but if a team does well at the regional tournament 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.

In previous seasons, Teams 3, 4, and 5 were named after colors instead of numbers in order to make the teams appear more equal.

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. They achieved the same feat in 2019

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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