Awesomely Run Event Stories

For anything Science Olympiad-related that might not fall under a specific event or competition.
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Panda Weasley
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Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by Panda Weasley »

So almost everyone has a Poorly Run Event Story http://scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php? ... 37#p268937, but what about awesomely run event stories? Here is where you can post stories of events that were run so perfectly it just made your day!

I'll go first. At States last year and Regionals this year there were live specimens for Entomology. It was amazing. Crime Busters at Regionals is always run by the same chemistry professor and he sets up the test perfectly each year. He also has a really awesome Australian accent. It literally makes my day every time I hear it.
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by GoofyFoofer »

Panda Weasley wrote:So almost everyone has a Poorly Run Event Story http://scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php? ... 37#p268937, but what about awesomely run event stories? Here is where you can post stories of events that were run so perfectly it just made your day!

I'll go first. At States last year and Regionals this year there were live specimens for Entomology. It was amazing. Crime Busters at Regionals is always run by the same chemistry professor and he sets up the test perfectly each year. He also has a really awesome Australian accent. It literally makes my day every time I hear it.
Thank you for making this forum!!!

Anyways, at LA Regionals today, WI/DI was run by some cool physicist guy who let us doers play Heads Up while we were waiting for the writers.
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by RaisinBrandon »

GoofyFoofer wrote: Thank you for making this forum!!!

Anyways, at LA Regionals today, WI/DI was run by some cool physicist guy who let us doers play Heads Up while we were waiting for the writers.
As I am on the HVS team as well as "GoofyFoofer", I also went to the same LA Regionals where on the Looooooooooooooooooong hike to the bottle rocket event area, there were signs that read "keep going!" And "almost there!" I don't know what is better, that someone took the time to type the signs, or that they were only viisable less than 25 yards of the feild. :lol: The supervisors were nice though, one guy said if we hit someone we would ten extra points :D We missed by less than 2 feet :(
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by syo_astro »

Immediate shout outs to BroNi and Gary Vorwald among some other amazing NYSSO event supervisors that I've had the pleasure to do their events :). I'm sure plenty could have bad things to say about event makers from NY to CA, but there's definitely multiple fantastic ones!

Alright, guess need some more story-ish stuff. I'll start with Rocks and Minerals. Junior year, the year in general was pretty terrible because of busyness, but Vorwald makes...well, one of the most beautiful rocks tests. It had diamond to gold to all kinds of beryl, giant sized rocks...even if I wasn't the best, I think everyone has to appreciate such awesomeness.

As for BroNi, I only got to see him twice (one time was at invites too) in senior year for scrambler, and, while I got poked fun at a little, he ran it clearly well and quite efficiently (I think others on the scrambler forum can attest to this). Though, I guess that's expected of a nats supervisor ;).

One other story was with Astro. For many years NYS astro...well, was sub-par. I can explain that at length, but the awesome part was senior year, after 1 year of this new writer writing for states, he made a far better test than what I had sophomore year. It's of course my favorite event, so I appreciate when it's done justice.

Hoping other members from NYS get to see some of the best!
Last edited by syo_astro on March 1st, 2015, 7:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by samlan16 »

How about the Crime Busters national test? The proctor is THE WOZ, the only I have known to have a zero tolerance policy on safety infractions. Not to mention the difficulty, which provides a good challenge for those who practice!
Last edited by samlan16 on February 6th, 2016, 10:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by Unome »

Last year at State, the Heredity test was particularly well written; it covered everything well and wasn't reused. Also, all of the Invitational tests I've taken this year for Simple Machines were very good (Explorers Homeschool Academy wrote two of them, and Piedmont wrote the other one).
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by Ripplestar »

The entomology test was good. There were no reused questions and we got to look at live specimens.
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by samlan16 »

Also, thanks for making this forum, Panda. PRES was becoming more of a place to complain instead of to exemplify poorly proctored competitions in order to avoid future mistakes. In fact, I explicitly stated at the beginning, "Note: this forum is meant to be a service to first time proctors so they know what not to do."
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by asthedeer »

This forum is a great idea. The proctors volunteer away whole days of their life. What do they get as a result? The kids they work with bad-mouthing them all over the place about how the proctor did this and didn't know the rules for this and used this bad test and on and on.
So anyways, my story.
Couple weeks ago, at regionals, the proctors were running both the high school and middle school Air Trajectory, one after the other. After hearing that the Air was being run wrong (yes, it was another case of volunteer proctor meaning well but not knowing the rules), when we were running our device, we held up a steady conversation with the proctors to make sure we knew what was right/wrong with their interpretation of the rules. They were very gracious (AMOF, they must have been the most gracious and nice proctors I've ever had), and allowed us 2 shots plus a bucket shot (which they hadn't let the high schoolers take- the highschoolers just gor 2 shots total).
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Re: Awesomely Run Event Stories

Post by coprolite_dipstick »

Fossils at Regionals was really cool. I had all my events in a row and I was really stressed (it was a bad day) so I ended up not placing in that event, but the setup was cool. I didn't like the proctor - she mistook my magnifying glass for a phone; how that happens, I have no idea - but they had a lot of life size plastic models and some real specimens of brachiopods and bivalves. They had a life size model of a mastodon tooth, as well as a model of a Crinoidea.

They also had a real coprolite (fossilized poo). I think that just about made my life.
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