Teach Me How to Captain!

[moumantai]

Hey guys! I'm from a small school that for the first time had more than 15 people try out for SciOly. I'm the science club president, and by extension, team captain, and I'm excited to help my team succeed.*

There are only four of us on the team that have done the competition before. Most of the rest of the team is sophomores and freshmen, so I want to make sure I'm supporting them in every way I can. What can I do? I'm going to check in with them regularly to make sure they're on track and show how to make/find good study resources, as well as have practice tests/practice events. Is there anything else I should be doing?

*The staff and I decided that if there are any underclassmen who have never done Oly that really want to and didn't make the team, we'd surrender our positions first. We're a very growth-mindset club and team.

[Macgyver]

Pizza on Fridays or on longer practice days? fun quiz minigames for the study event kids?

[Panda Weasley]

*The staff and I decided that if there are any underclassmen who have never done Oly that really want to and didn't make the team, we'd surrender our positions first. We're a very growth-mindset club and team.

This is so heartwarming!

Your plan so far sounds like a good one! I would just say make sure you keep up with your plans because they sound great and I would hate for you and the team to lose momentum. Also, similar to what Macgyver said, some short, fun team bonding activities at the end of practice might be a good idea with your focus of growth. Not only will it help your team feel more like a team, it'll also show that SciOly is not just about stress, studying, and winning- it's about having fun too!

I hope that was helpful. Good luck with the rest of your season!

[knottingpurple]

I think one important thing is to remind everyone that it's not about the medal count, it's about improving as a team. It helps the team just as much to study hard at something you're bad at and go from 20th place to 18th place as it does to study hard at something you were already pretty good at to go from a 3rd place medal to a 1st place medal. If they don't medal in an event, that's okay, the point is just to improve, no matter what the starting point is. Good luck!

[daydreamer0023]

If anything, find ways to grow together as a team. Go to a couple nearby invites together if you can. The more team bonding time you can get, the better the season feels at the end - that stuck with me more than my medal counts, which I still care about to an extent (and I'd consider myself fairly competitive).

[moumantai]

Re: invites - Bc of school rules, it's crazy difficult to facilitate team travel to invites, but I'm trying to have team mini-testing days (probably a two-meeting event).
Re: pizza - THIS IS AN AWESOME IDEA. I attend a community college and no high school classes (I'm still a senior tho) and it would be no problem for me to grab pizza on the way to a meeting.
Re: team bonding - Yeah, I agree. I'm going to look for more ways to increase this.

I love you guys, thanks so much.

Another question - How can I help build teams stay on track? We have Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome.

[Husires]

*We have Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome.*
LOL, I like that. anyway, thank you guys very much for all your help. i really really appreciate everything. i found good information on https://www.musclegurus.to/, at least for me. may i ask some questions here as well? i'm new here.

[WhatScience?]

*We have Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome.*
LOL, I like that. anyway, thank you guys very much for all your help. i really really appreciate everything. i found good information, at least for me. may i ask some questions here as well? i'm new here.

Depends on the context...If it is about captaining feel free to use this thread. If it is about something else, go to general chat [that is this subforum] and create a new thread about whatever you want to ask.

[Macgyver]

Re: invites - Bc of school rules, it's crazy difficult to facilitate team travel to invites, but I'm trying to have team mini-testing days (probably a two-meeting event).
Re: pizza - THIS IS AN AWESOME IDEA. I attend a community college and no high school classes (I'm still a senior tho) and it would be no problem for me to grab pizza on the way to a meeting.
Re: team bonding - Yeah, I agree. I'm going to look for more ways to increase this.

I love you guys, thanks so much.

Another question - How can I help build teams stay on track? We have Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome.

The "Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome” hit us pretty heavilly last year. So to fix that me and my fellow builders were given time frames of 3 weeks per frame (2 build events per time frame) to design, build, and test once. Once your 3 weeks is up the others like me start on our next build event. And when your done with the time frames you can go back and tweak things.

[moumantai]

The "Building-The-Night-Before Syndrome” hit us pretty heavilly last year. So to fix that me and my fellow builders were given time frames of 3 weeks per frame (2 build events per time frame) to design, build, and test once. Once your 3 weeks is up the others like me start on our next build event. And when your done with the time frames you can go back and tweak things.

That's really smart! I'm going to propose that to our teams.

Update re: Team size/cuts - It's looking like I may forfeit my spot this year. I'm okay with it for the most part - I've medaled every year I've done SO, and I don't need to feel that excitement anymore. I want others to know how cool it is to win, so I'm probably going to announce the open spot next week and be a team mentor for logistics and for the life sciences teams. For some reason I feel even more excited for Oly than ever?