North Carolina 2018

[Alex-RCHS]

This thread is for discussing the 2018 season of North Carolina Science Olympiad!

State website (still under construction, unfortunately)

Invitationals
Division B
Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC)
O'Neil School

Division C
lol, no

Regional Tournament List (contains info about dates, locations, etc.)

State Tournament
Location: NC State University
Date: April 21, 2018

General Info
- NC is the second-largest state for Science Olympiad, with 630 B and C teams. At our current pace of growth, we will surpass NY and become the most populous SO state within the next two years.
- NC ran the first ever version of Science Olympiad in the 1970s, which helped to inspire the club that we know today.
- NCSO runs an altered slate of events. In Division C, we remove replace Game On with Amazing Mechatronics and Fermi Questions with CodeBusters. We also have an additional event, Ping Pong Parachute, which is essentially bottle rocket. Experimental Design is run as a real event only at states. Duct Tape Challenge is a trial at states and some regionals. See these websites for more B and C info.

This should be an interesting year for NCSO, especially for Division C. Last year saw an increase in competitiveness, and I could theoretically see any of last year's top 5 moving on to nationals this year.

[Alex-RCHS]

The O'Neal School Division B invitational occurred in December, but I've only recently seen the results, which were surprising. Wilmington AAS beat Piedmont by a large margin. Obviously it occurred pretty early in the season, but given Piedmont's past margins of victory it was no doubt an upset.

[venules]

Piedmont won the CPCC Invitational, but WAAS did not attend the competition, most likely due to the snow. It will be interesting to see how these two go up against each other at state.

However, there's also been an influx of teams from outside the Mecklenburg/Cabarrus/Rowan/Union area signing up for the Charlotte tournament, and Division C is one team away from capacity, so this year is definitely going to have some surprises.

[jackway]

Wilmington AAS is definitely a surprise, especially given how much they beat Piedmont by. Does anyone know how well they've done historically? It'll be interesting how Wilmington, Piedmont, and Carnage stack up at states.

[Alex-RCHS]

Hey, more NC people! It’s nice to see others on here.

Looking back at the scores from O’Neal I see that piedmont actually had 3 teams, and the first two were pretty competitive with WAAS. I still think it’s below average for Piedmont (based on their typical domination at states) but it probably isn’t a sign of disaster for them. Unfortunately all of the old regional results have been taken down from the NCSO website (I had links to them but they show up as error messages now) so we won’t have any context for regional results after they occur. Worse, Carnage, Piedmont and WAAS compete in different regions so it will be very hard to predict the state results.

The Raleigh and National Ready regional tournaments are just under 10 days away! Any predictions?

[venules]

I was looking through old state results to update the wiki, and I think the earliest WAAS has been at states was in 2013/2014 as an FPOW team. I could research further.

I'm not the best at making predictions, so I'll stay away from that.

[jackway]

Prediction for national ready: top 4 will be Enloe, SSM, RCHS, and Smoky Mountain in no particular order

[Alex-RCHS]

Prediction for national ready: top 4 will be Enloe, SSM, RCHS, and Smoky Mountain in no particular order

Haha, yeah in no particular order.

*whispers* it probably will be in that order anyway

[venules]

I honestly wish that the Duke invitational hadn't been pushed back to next season. It may be easier for Division C teams to get their heads in the game and for them to have similar opportunities to Div B. I think the only real opening for Div C was at the SO Showcase at the Museum of Natural Sciences (some teams that are competing in Raleigh this weekend went there), and I don't know if teams are actually ranked or if any of those tests will ever see the light of day.

[daydreamer0023]

I honestly wish that the Duke invitational hadn't been pushed back to next season. It may be easier for Division C teams to get their heads in the game and for them to have similar opportunities to Div B. I think the only real opening for Div C was at the SO Showcase at the Museum of Natural Sciences (some teams that are competing in Raleigh this weekend went there), and I don't know if teams are actually ranked or if any of those tests will ever see the light of day.

I've been to that invite...and it's honestly even easier than regionals.