Ohio 2011

[French_Toast]

Alas i was incorrect, my team will be going to the invitational the following week, I think it's likst west salem or something, that sound right?

West Liberty-Salem is the weekend following Wright State, if I remember correctly. wlsguy will be able to give you better information on that, he's our coach and the tournament director, so he knows what's going on.

So, how was everybody's Solon trip, for those that went? I had fun, all the events that I participated in were run well. I was a bit ticked about that Anatomy screw up during the awards though, I wasn't so thrilled about giving back a medal I was still amazed that I got... Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

[MethuselahHoneysuckl]

I personally hated how Division B EXD was set up. Was there any valid reason that the event runners got the event started twenty minutes late? And the "experiment" was pretty poor, our experiment was to build the tallest tower possible. Our team had no idea how to make an experiment out of that, yet we still got seventh. Other than that, everything was pretty good.

[Starapollo1]

Alas i was incorrect, my team will be going to the invitational the following week, I think it's likst west salem or something, that sound right?

West Liberty-Salem is the weekend following Wright State, if I remember correctly. wlsguy will be able to give you better information on that, he's our coach and the tournament director, so he knows what's going on.

So, how was everybody's Solon trip, for those that went? I had fun, all the events that I participated in were run well. I was a bit ticked about that Anatomy screw up during the awards though, I wasn't so thrilled about giving back a medal I was still amazed that I got... Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

That is really weird.... yesterday at TK they misread the results for anatomy, and after they handed them out they re-did it and the team next to us had to give back their medal ...

[wlsguy]

St. Ignatius will also not be attending, as we take only one long distance (read: overnight) trip before states, and that'll be to Chicago the 12th - so basically 4 of the top 5 from last year won't be there, but Centerville is the one that will AFAIK

Centerville will be there!!! Holy crap! I suddenly feel so inadequate to compete at this invitational... lol But St. Ignatious for sure can't go I was looking forward to getting to see you guys in action! Well I hope to see some other great schools! But i'm sure I will, Ohio seems to be one of the more competitive states... if not THE most competitive!

While we don't have St. Ignatious we do have 36 C teams this year at West Liberty-Salem including: Nats Champion Centerville, 3rd Solon, 7th LASA. We have teams from 7 states including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Penn, Kentucky, Tenn, Texas.

For B division we have 25 teams including the Natl Champions Solon and Magsig 6th.

Overall, since we allow multiple teams from each school, a win here is possibly as difficult as Nationals.
In any case, we look forward to the oppertunity to host everyone and look forward to a good competition in a little less than a month.

[sisomg11]

Well, there was a mix-up with our two teams' forensics scores being swapped, which would've affected the team placing a little, but it was a terrible day for our team as a whole at Solon. Just terrible. I did ok in my events, but now I have to try to figure out a way to dig us back out of this funk for the next few weeks

[Starapollo1]

St. Ignatius will also not be attending, as we take only one long distance (read: overnight) trip before states, and that'll be to Chicago the 12th - so basically 4 of the top 5 from last year won't be there, but Centerville is the one that will AFAIK

Centerville will be there!!! Holy crap! I suddenly feel so inadequate to compete at this invitational... lol But St. Ignatious for sure can't go I was looking forward to getting to see you guys in action! Well I hope to see some other great schools! But i'm sure I will, Ohio seems to be one of the more competitive states... if not THE most competitive!

While we don't have St. Ignatious we do have 36 C teams this year at West Liberty-Salem including: Nats Champion Centerville, 3rd Solon, 7th LASA. We have teams from 7 states including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Penn, Kentucky, Tenn, Texas.

For B division we have 25 teams including the Natl Champions Solon and Magsig 6th.

Overall, since we allow multiple teams from each school, a win here is possibly as difficult as Nationals.
In any case, we look forward to the oppertunity to host everyone and look forward to a good competition in a little less than a month.

Wow!!! I'm really excited! I'm from Northridge Highschool in Indiana, West Liberty-Salem is sure to be a blast!!! That's so cool that so many states are being represented, it's definately going to be the most competitive competition we go to all year...

[zomasta]

case western reserve is tomorrow

[French_Toast]

Yawn, Wright State was fun today. I'm tired now, but I'll do a quick recollection of my day.

Get to the Protein Modeling room at 7:30, which is when impound is supposed to start, and the proctor isn't there. No big deal, I figured I'd just wait around for a bit. Other teams start to show up, and we're all just hanging out. Proctor ends up showing up at 8:30, when the event itself was set to start. Some teams had to go do other events, and ended up just leaving the pre-build in the room, so I watched those for them. As for the event itself, the test was well written, but there was no on-site build, which is the only part of the event that I know. My partner did decent I guess, and we pulled 20th or something like that.

Went to Optics, which I was mainly there for moral support. My partner bumped the first mirror as he was taking the sticky notes off, and that resulted in missing the second one completely. Apparently our other team did it too. Test looked pretty tough to me, but I wouldn't know, I was in charge of finding stuff in the binder. I forget what we placed in there, but it was top 20.

Anatomy was next, and I'm kinda backup in there too, which turned out to be a good thing. They had actual specimens for us to look at, which was really cool and all, but it made the room reek of preservatives, which made my head hurt and made me sick. By the halfway point I had kinda stopped thinking so I let my partner fully take over. Pulled like 18th in there, give or take.

By this time I'm starving, and I have Disease, so I can't run to a concession stand to find food. Thankfully I had a pack of Combo's in my bag, which turned out to be life savers. Went in, Disease test was very good, there was a few things that I messed up on and probably would've gotten had I not been restrained for time(my partner hardly knows the event at all, so I did most everything). Pulled 12th though, which is really good for me in Disease.

Had a time slot off, and got to eat some pizza, which was meh, but food is always good. Then I got to do Technical Problem Solving for the first time ever. Just gonna say, it's one of my favorite events now. There were three problems. One had something to do with a ramp and friction, and I'm not sure of the specifics because my partner handled that one. The second was a weight dipped in a mystery liquid(that we had a sample of), and we had to guess how much the weight would weight after it had been dipped in. I don't think we ended up figuring that out.

The third one is what I did though. You had an erlenmeyer flask, 4 alka-seltzer tablets, water, and a rubber stopper hooked up to a pressure sensor(which hooked into a graphing calculator that they provided), and you had to get a combination that would get as close to 150 KPA. I decided to set water as a constant, and used 50ml for all tests(reasoning behind 50 is it's a round number for me, lol). First test I dropped an entire tablet in, and it gave me way too much pressure(I couldn't hold the stopper on). I tried a half a tablet, and from there set up a proportion to find out how much alka-seltzer I needed to hit 150. I ended doing better than most teams, I hit 145.9 KPA. Had I been more experienced in the event, my writeup of the logic and math would've been a lot better, but meh, I was happy with myself. We ended up getting 19th, so I was content.

Overall it was a fun day. Protein was a little frustrating, but the proctor did come from Indiana and drive up this morning, and he was a volunteer, so I can't blame him too much. It seemed all our good events(read:not the ones listed above) did bad(our helicopter broke, and instead of placing in the top 2 like we always do, we got dead last(we probably would've won if it weren't for that, and some team got their copter stuck in the light and got a 6:00+ minute flight, and it was still considered to be supporting itself somehow), and our Mission Possible balloon became detached(and that normally places even on bad days, it wins on good days) and our worse events(Technical, Anatomy, Remote, Disease, and a few others) did better than usual. Hopefully we can bounce back at WLS and get some momentum going into Regionals.

Anyone else have stories to share?

[tdooner]

case western reserve is tomorrow

Hey guys. I helped organize (and read the scores at) yesterday's Case Western regional. Overall, I thought the event went well but I know there was a lot of coach and team frustration.

My question to anyone who competed at CWRU yesterday is this -- what did you experience, and how could we improve on it next year? If you don't want to clutter the thread, feel free to PM me your response.

Thanks!

P.S. Of particular interest to me is the online registration system which I created. I hope to provide this as an open-source solution to competition organizers throughout the country and would love to hear feedback regarding it.

[MMeteorite1]

"Case is a great experience for any middle school or high school student. In regards to organization of event, very average. Events ran let, forcing contestants to run across campus, being late for next event. Talk was many event tests were very short and easy (only 20-40 questions) which doesn't separate average, good and great). Meteorlogy had 40 questions and did NOT follow the Severe Storms theme. Though I can not confirm, I did hear that one proctor was handing out help sheets to those students who didn't bring one. Really?" My school made it out to state so this is not sour grapes. Solon, Kenston and Mentor Invitations were more challenging and much better organized"

case western reserve is tomorrow

Hey guys. I helped organize (and read the scores at) yesterday's Case Western regional. Overall, I thought the event went well but I know there was a lot of coach and team frustration.

My question to anyone who competed at CWRU yesterday is this -- what did you experience, and how could we improve on it next year? If you don't want to clutter the thread, feel free to PM me your response.

Thanks!

P.S. Of particular interest to me is the online registration system which I created. I hope to provide this as an open-source solution to competition organizers throughout the country and would love to hear feedback regarding it.