Idaho 2018

[Tailsfan101]

Good luck to everyone competing tomorrow!

[IdahoSciGuy]

We're ready for a fight this year Bishop Kelly, quite excited to see how y'all do. My team is ready to compete on Saturday and just all around excited to see who comes on top.

Also it's so cool to know there's an Idaho grad here! I'm quite excited to see how the Herpetology test is run, hoping it'll be good. Shame we aren't at Northwest Nazarene this year though, we could of had actual specimens! Although to be fair taking Invasives in that room was a struggle for me, too many cool animals to wanna look at.

That's our hope to eventually get to that point! This is our first year at Boise State, so there might be a few growing pains as we get the feel for a new campus and receive more support as time goes on!

Since it's the night before, let me wish you all the best of luck and let me know if there's anything we can do to make it better for competitors after this is all said and done!

[RoboStudent]

Good luck to everyone competing tomorrow!

Yeah, you guys too! The grind is finishing off right now- my brother is on St. Joe's 7th-grade varsity and he's feeling the night-before stress happens to the best of us

[Nerd_Bunny]

Good morning everyone! Good luck today- it's going to be fun!

[NeBH]

Good morning everyone! Good luck today- it's going to be fun!

https://media.giphy.com/media/72RbzDyPdRf44/200.gif

Geronimo!

[RoboStudent]

Do any of you want to meet up at the Starbucks after the events?

[IdahoSciGuy]

Was a Heck of a fun day today! I ended up proctoring Solar System and Herpetology today! I'm actually still grading solar system, so I've got a bit to go!

[MissAmargasaurus]

Wow, what a great day! I'm so so excited to be attending nationals again! Everything seemed great, I'm really happy with how well hosting was at BSU. Can't wait to see how it improves next year. And our team finished with 36 points, wow!

Now for my thoughts on each of my events.

Herpetology (1st): Very well run event! The stations were a great change after having powerpoints for a few years. I found the questions to be of a good difficulty, not too easy but also not so hard you couldn't answer for a majority of them. There were only 6 questions I believe that me and my partner could not answer/ran out of time for, 2 minutes surprisingly was enough time for almost every station! I think the only criticism I would have is that I found the station rotation to be confusing at the beginning, but as the event went on it got easier. I'd suggest marking the paper bags/backs of the paper with the station number in order to make things go smoothly in the future, and that I think the answer sheet could of had more room for writing as some of the scientific names can get VERY long.

Experimental Design (1st): Also well run! I was not expecting that topic, I assumed we'd probably get something based on flight considering the large room. Having the rubric available was both good and bad I feel, haha! It was helpful to have (especially for keeping things in order) considering we did not have a template to write on, but at the same time it did remove the competitive edge a team can have from having the rubric memorized. Sorry to whoever got our materials, I couldn't untie the knot on the washers, oops!

Ecology: (2nd): Not bad, but also not great too, y'know? I found the test to be a bit too easy, with only 2-3 questions that I feel were hard enough for a state level. I think the length of it could of been doubled, along with math questions as there were none on it. It was a nice test though, I was just hoping for something more challenging.

[Tailsfan101]

Final results:
Division B
1. Treasure Valley Homeschool (114)
2. St. Joseph's Catholic School (126)
3. St. Joseph's Catholic School (143)
4. St. Joseph's Catholic School (184)
5. Sacred Heart Catholic School (194)

Division C
1. Treasure Valley Homeschool (36)
2. Twin Falls High School (83)
3. Bishop Kelly High School (95)
4. Rigby High School (98)
5. Weiser High School (108)

For reference, Division B had 31 teams, while Division C had just 13. I'm very happy my B predictions ended up wrong.

[MissAmargasaurus]

Bless you Tails I only had pictures of the results for division C and couldn't find the scores for division B, I updated the post in the state results thread so it has that for the B teams too now.