Replaying Events for 2021

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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by pb5754 »

I would also like to point out that there are a lot of students (especially juniors) who have been waiting for an opportunity to compete in certain events they really like (Rocks and Minerals, for me) one more time during their senior year. Replaying the 2020 events essentially destroys this opportunity.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by karmanyaahm »

I am overall in favor of changing the rules just because things will get boring, and top building events will be hard to differentiate.

But, there is one aspect of this that I find appealing. This will let teams show their true potential based on the amount of time they put in, and not based on talent, guidance or other available resources. I understand that these will still play a big role, but that role will be reduced. The best part though, is that there will be a clear differentiating factor between the top teams, who put in the hours during the summer, and other teams who are either not able to, or just value relaxation over Science Olympiad. This will be a unique opportunity in the history of Science Olympiad to see how things play out when for the middle teams - not the top 3, not the bottom 3 - with the purely the amount of effort they put in, and this can truly differentiate the real winners.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by chalker »

As I indicated before, the Rules Chairs had some extensive discussions over the past few days regarding the Replaying Events ideas. There are many very good arguments both for and against the idea, and hence there isn't any particular solution that would make everyone happy. Many of the points discussed in this thread were included in that discussion.

One aspect of that warrants a bit of a deeper dive is that fact that as of only 8 States have concluded the season. A supermajority of the State still have many regional and state tournaments that haven't been held yet. For example, here in Ohio 3 out of our 8 regionals haven't been held yet, in Michigan 7 out of 14 regionals haven't be run yet. And there are reports from many regionals run in the past week that many schools were unable to attend due to travel restrictions.

By extension, a significant number (likely a majority) of the 8,000+ teams around the country haven't had the chance to put all their hard work so far this year to practice in a regional or state competition setting. Replaying Events provides those teams with an opportunity to build upon their work so far for next year.

Another point that hasn't been raised is the running of trial events. It's very likely that many tournaments next year will end up running events that were scheduled for the 20-21 season as trial events. That will be an opportunity for competitors to participate in new things or events they might have been looking forward to.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by SciolyMaster »

I support the decision to keep the same events in rotation, however I would definitely like to see changes in the rules (i.e. study event topics, build event specifications, etc.) so teams don't end up having to spend hours every day during the summer "grinding" to keep up with the competition. In the past, rules changes have been expected for most events that are run in back-to-back years; I hope the Rules Chairs decide to follow this routine instead of copying the 2019-20 rules verbatim.
Last edited by SciolyMaster on March 11th, 2020, 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by nmurali2002 »

karmanyaahm wrote: March 11th, 2020, 5:48 pm I am overall in favor of changing the rules just because things will get boring, and top building events will be hard to differentiate.

But, there is one aspect of this that I find appealing. This will let teams show their true potential based on the amount of time they put in, and not based on talent, guidance or other available resources.
I understand that these will still play a big role, but that role will be reduced. The best part though, is that there will be a clear differentiating factor between the top teams, who put in the hours during the summer, and other teams who are either not able to, or just value relaxation over Science Olympiad. This will be a unique opportunity in the history of Science Olympiad to see how things play out when for the middle teams - not the top 3, not the bottom 3 - with the purely the amount of effort they put in, and this can truly differentiate the real winners.
That's the problem. People have travel plans over the summer that they've had for months. Teachers, who often advise SciOly teams, might have kids at home - who will take care of them while they go to run a SciOly practice? Top placements will come down to sheer random chance for both build and study events.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by chalker »

One other comment I forgot to make: we have to think about the 90+% of competitors / teams that don't make it past regionals, not just the 120 teams that make it to Nationals (although we take those into consideration too). Those of you here on SciOly are in the top 1% of SO competitors in terms of passion and interest in the program. The vast majority of competitors won't be thinking about SO during the summer and spending a ton of time refining their devices or topic knowledge (although it'd be great if they did!)
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by IHateClouds »

i think this also speaks to a broader issue with running events two years in a row to begin with. i strongly dislike the fact that events are in for more than one year and the only event i had that didnt change, EXPD (and meteo to some extent) is not my favorite event because after doing it for so long its hard to improve. even with rule tweaks, having events in longer than a year discourages exploration of more topics
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by AmBecomeFossil »

Just a little more input for this conversation:
This is my third year doing Scioly and first year competing in C and I was insanely happy when I heard this. Like literally, I couldn't believe it. Fossils is by far my favorite event this program has to offer, and while I was incredibly sad knowing this would be my last year ever to compete in it (sophmore), I had a regionals and more importantly, a states competition to look forward to so I could enjoy it one final time. When the cancellations started, I was absolutely devastated that my final chance to do what I love got stolen away. I am all for replaying the events with some of the regular rule changes and updates, specifically for build events. Aside from that, thank you NSO for giving me this opportunity.
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by will0416 »

chalker wrote: March 11th, 2020, 6:02 pm One other comment I forgot to make: we have to think about the 90+% of competitors / teams that don't make it past regionals, not just the 120 teams that make it to Nationals (although we take those into consideration too). Those of you here on SciOly are in the top 1% of SO competitors in terms of passion and interest in the program. The vast majority of competitors won't be thinking about SO during the summer and spending a ton of time refining their devices or topic knowledge (although it'd be great if they did!)
Just as a clarification, am I correct in assuming that no schedule changes would be made with regards to events that currently conflict?
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Re: Replaying Events for 2021

Post by OrigamiPlanet »

I get keeping all events, but if they’re keeping stuff verbatim, that’s pretty dull. At the very least they should make the events harder so that people have to extend even further. Add more topics to study events; widen the range of on-site labs; more parameters for builds. That would in my opinion be a fair compromise.
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