Improving Weak Events

[Anonymous15]

Hey guys,
Do you know how to improve events that are seemingly weaker throughout a team? If nobody knows how to do a particular event really well, what are things you can do to improve them(assuming that you are not doing them)?

Thanks!

[LittleMissNyan]

Uhhh ideas off the top of my head
- Find resources and stuff and send it to them
- Ask the science/tech ed teacher if they can do things with them
- Give them an emotional support potato

[nateDC]

+1 to the potato

[wec01]

For build events other builders could help as long as the people on it are still primary builders. As for study events it's a bit more difficult and I can't think of much besides finding resources or finding people who do similar events to help and/or do the event. In general, sometimes there are events that are simply hard to cover with the people you have and you just have to work with what you have.

[Ninn]

If it's a study event, the best you can do is to make them run through practice tests, especially the harder ones.

[PAweatherguy]

Success in Science Olympiad comes down to a few key items:

1. You've got to want it.
2. You've got to work for it.
3. You can't give up when you get frustrated.

Bonus: if you have someone that is passionate about a certain subject, it helps to assign them events around it.

Now if you've satisfied all of the above, my suggestions include performing a lot of research, going over college level textbooks around the material for the event, experimenting with different designs if it is a building event (if bridge building is still a thing, when I did that I built one once a week or sometimes twice and tested each one out until I found a design that I could take to competition), talking with professors at a local community college or university about questions you may have, etc.

[SPP SciO]

I think as a captain or coach it’s important to stress the “we are only as strong as our weakest link” mantra all season, or at least through the last qualifying tournament. As we lead up to regionals, I always stress the following hypothetical - two students, each with 3 events to prepare for - one student gets 1st, 1st, and 20th, the other gets 7th, 7th, 7th. From the individual perspective, going home with 2 gold medals in favorite events seems great (and you bombed one, but there’s always an excuse for that..) - but from the team perspective, the 21 points accumulated by the second student was better than 22, even though they never get called to the stage for a medal.

It all depends on goals though. For us, the goal is to qualify for states, so after regionals, there is little value in pressuring students to prep for events that they just don’t enjoy as much. There’s little difference in placing 20th or 30th at a tournament, but the extra time invested into a favorite event for a shot at a medal can pay off for a student in the long run.

[megrimlockawesom]

just study more LUL

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

just study more LUL

I think that building and motivating a team effort is probably more important, especially if the weaker events are events that you're not doing. This is a team competition!