2020 BEARSO Invitational

The 2020 BEARSO Invitational was the 2020-2021 iteration of the BEARSO Invitational. It was the first online tournament in the 2021 season and was the first tournament to use the Scilympiad platform for testing in the season. The tournament was introduced as a fun start to the 2021 season, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as an event to help teams get acclimated to the new Scilympiad platform. Due to these characteristics, the tournament brought in a record number of Science Olympiad teams for one invitational, with over 300 competing on the same day.

Communication was established with teams prior to the tournament date about tournament policies generally through a public Google Doc where the tournament organizers would publish updates for teams. The event actually took place on Saturday, October 10, 2020. After the event had concluded on that day, the awards ceremony took place one week later, on Saturday, October 17, 2020. The awards ceremony was hosted through a public YouTube livestream and featured statements on the tournament from competitors, acknowledgements, and the awards. The top ten places in Division B and the top twenty places in Division C won awards at the tournament.

Events
The tournament ran 23 events, but due to the Mini SO format of the competition, some modifications were made to the typical event rules. Additionally, some events were replaced with other events that were more digitally friendly.

Schedule
The events were split into six blocks throughout the day.

The event blocks were then assigned times that students could take the test in. Students could not take the test outside of the times allotted for each block. Students competing from Alaska and Hawaii did not immediately start the day by competing in Block 1; rather, they began taking tests in later blocks before returning to earlier blocks. This was done to balance the times that students would be competing with reducing the chance of cheating on the exams by sharing information across timezones.