Minnesota 2011

Paradox21
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Re: Minnesota 2011

Post by Paradox21 »

I competed in the Boyceville invite for the past 2 years (or was it 3? I don't recall). One thing that is unique about the Boyceville tournament (for people from MN) is that it had 28 events for teams to compete in. With so many events in such a short amount of time, we had a lot of people with 5 or 6 events who ended up not having enough time to eat much of a lunch. Now, in my experience, this happens at pretty much every SO competition, but that doesn't mean it should be ok. I would have appreciated having a built in lunch hour in the middle of the day where everyone can stop to eat lunch. That is, have an empty block in the schedule designated for lunch. You could probably make even more revenue by selling even more people lunch, and nobody would come out of the award ceremony with an empty pit in their stomach (from lack of food, of course ;) ). I'm sure that some of the building event supervisors for events like Towers would appreciate a time to sit down and eat lunch.

On another note, I think the award ceremony last year was perhaps the smoothest one of the year. I thought that Avogardo was used very nicely and I thought it was a great idea to start announcing awards before all events had been finalized. Nobody likes waiting around for the award ceremony, for any reason. By that point, people are usually very tired and very hungry, which makes them very grumpy. Our team got a bit annoyed with the B division results alternating with the C Div results, but I think this is probably standard procedure for tournaments that have B and C teams competing (MN has no such competitions).
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Re: Minnesota 2011

Post by haverstall »

First, I would like to thank you, Mr. Hamm, for setting up the Boyceville Invitational. I''m going to be a senior at Mounds View, and we always enjoy going to Boyceville. You could say it's one of our biggest recruiting methods, (You'd be amazed at the number of people who want to squish on a school bus for a 3 hour ride at 6 in the morning.)

Second, I completely agree with Paradox.
Paradox21 wrote: I would have appreciated having a built in lunch hour in the middle of the day where everyone can stop to eat lunch. That is, have an empty block in the schedule designated for lunch. You could probably make even more revenue by selling even more people lunch, and nobody would come out of the award ceremony with an empty pit in their stomach (from lack of food, of course ;) ). I'm sure that some of the building event supervisors for events like Towers would appreciate a time to sit down and eat lunch.
I was lucky in that I only had 3-4 events at Boyceville the past 3 years, so I had time for lunch. (By the way, the super nachos are AMAZING.) I do have friends though who had to eat during the awards ceremony, because that was the only time they could eat. Along the lines of Paradox's suggestion for a separate lunch hour, you could have B Div have a lunch hour, and then have Div C have a lunch hour right after. This would allow people to mingle more and meet other people. I know this could be a stress on scheduling, but if it's possible, we would be very grateful.

Finally, I completely agree with Paradox again on the awards ceremony. Last year was definitely the best year by far. I remember 2 years ago, there was a game show, in order to wait for the complete results, but our coaches eventually got tired, and we left in the middle of the awards ceremony. (Sorry.)

Anyway, thank you again for setting up this great tournament. We hope to see you in December!
Mounds View Science Olympiad 2008-2012 || 6th, Remote Sensing, 2011 Nationals

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Re: Minnesota 2011

Post by sciolycoach »

Thanks for the ideas and comments. Yes, the year we did the game show before the awards ceremony was a disaster, but that was because of glitches with the scoring software and a couple of waaaaayyyy too slow event supervisors. I certainly want to start within 30 minutes for awards again this year and, therefore, we probably won't have a significant entertainment program. Last year was the first year we used a coaches hospitality/scoring room with a scoring committee, and that allowed everything to move much quicker and more efficiently. Also, using Avogadro allows us to start the awards ceremony and run the presentation without every event scored.

The lunch break idea is an interesting idea, but I don't think it would be possible in the scheduling. To make this work we would need to go to a 7-block schedule and that would mean either starting events at 8 and ending at 3 or something to that effect, and many coaches have emphasized that they can't start that early (too far to travel) and don't want to end too late (again, too far to travel). Event supervisors currently have lunch delivered to them (all event supervisors except build supervisors have at least half of their day off) but that is an interesting concern on the students part. In Wisconsin, we have a rule that a student can be in no more than 5 events, so that guarantees that a student has at least one open block (though it may not line up with lunch), but we don't enforce that rule at our invite because it is not a national rule. I'll do some head-scratching and talk to a few others here and see if we can think of anything...I'll also e-mail several coaches and get their opinions. At the very least, if we can't get the schedule to work out, how about keeping the concession stand open before, during, and after the awards ceremony (and moving it down to the gymmatorium), for teams that have a long travel time ahead of them?

And, yes, it is common practice to alternate between Div B & C events during the awards ceremony. We tried to keep things moving quickly last year and hope to do the same this year.

Yes, I can believe the number of people who want to go to a far-away tournament...we always had plenty of students who wanted to travel to Wayzata and experience a "big" school...my students are always amazed at the sheer size and facilities in Wayzata, as Boyceville is so tiny (we only have around 210 students in grades 9-12 total). Certainly a great experience!

Andy Hamm
Boyceville HS
Andy Hamm
Boyceville Science Olympiad
Boyceville, WI
Luo
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Re: Minnesota 2011

Post by Luo »

Mr. Hamm,

I noticed that, according to the state event list, Wisconsin will not be running Microbe Mission, Optics, Thermodynamics Lab, or Robot Arm at its tournaments in 2012. Would you please consider running those events at the Boyceville Invitational for the benefit of the Minnesota and Illinois teams attending? The extra practice in those events would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter. See you on December 17!

Luo
Mounds View High School
Proud alumnus of Mounds View High School Science Olympiad, Arden Hills, MN
Co-founder of the MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament: http://scioly.mit.edu/
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Re: Minnesota 2011

Post by sciolycoach »

Luo,

Boy, you are fast...those were just released. Rest assured that we will be running those 4 events,along with the WI 25 events as we recognize that many of our competitors are out of state. So, we will run a total of 29 events at our invite. For team scoring, we will only score a teams best 23 events...we will drop their worst six events, as we have done in the past. It is possible that Sumo Bots will be our pre-awards entertainment.

I would also like to let you know that the UW River Falls invite on Jan 21st is also planning on running these 29 events as well. Please pass this information along and I look forward to Dec 17th. Hopefully your team is also able to attend UWRF on Jan 21.

Andy Hamm
Boyceville HS
Andy Hamm
Boyceville Science Olympiad
Boyceville, WI
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