One of my own "didn't expect a medal" stories. . .
Two years ago, at State, I did Dynamic Planet with my best friend. We had done okay at Regionals, but not spectacular, so I wasn't expecting a medal. Then we took the test, and it was more about Rocks and Minerals! They gave us a Mohs Scale chart to fill in, and we had to name the state mineral of IL. There were no questions about volcanoes, and maybe 2 about earthquakes. I had paged through the Rocks and Minerals section in the Earth Science textbook earlier that day on a whim, but we still thought we failed. When we were walking out of the building, we saw a display for the IL state mineral (flourine), and I'd guessed it right! Alphabetically, it was my first event. My partner is supersuper optimistic, so when they call out 4th and 3rd, she thinks it might be us (I'm sorta but not really pessimistic, but I didn't think we'd get one). But by the time they got to 2nd, we were both convinced it wouldn't be a medal. Then, they call us for first. It was our team's first medal, so everyone starts screaming! It was our first state medal, and as I get up, my friend whacks me on the back so hard I almost fall over! I was so excited. Every girl on our team won a medal that year.
Now, it's a joke between the two of us that if we win a medal, she slaps me.
I made fun of my event partner (who medaled) because I did almost all of the work and he mostly sat there.
