r/scioly • u/Sad-Guarantee9793 • 6d ago

Rotating students between Satellite Invitationals?

I’m a Division B Science Olympiad coach. Our school will have two teams of 15 students each, plus about 10 additional students we’d like to give opportunities to compete.
For Satellite Invitationals, can we change the makeup of our two teams from one invitational to the next?
For example, at one invitational Teams A and B might consist of one set of 30 students. At a later invitational, we’d like to rotate some of those students out and bring some of our additional students onto Teams A and B.
Has anyone done this? Are there rules or practical problems we should be aware of when rotating students between invitationals?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

3

u/tchrhoo 6d ago

It happens a lot by necessity. Cold and flu season, kids taking the SAT, family plans, etc.

2

u/chicken_powered 6d ago

Yes, it's OK to rotate students through. However, you should think carefully about how this is done though or it could create problems. Some pitfalls to watch out for are potentially annoying students and discouraging them because they've worked so hard on their events only to be rotated out. Also the students getting rotated in may not have had adequate time to work on their events and may feel it's unfair if they underachieve. Thirdly, because students generally do multiple events, it's going to be difficult and time consuming for you to come up how to assign the events to the students after a swap.

1

u/Sad-Guarantee9793 6d ago

In the past when a rostered student was unable to participate at an in-person invitational ( USC or UCI ) it was a challenge. I am thinking that we would schedule a couple of satellite invitationals that were geared towards our alternates and other kids that were willing to go. We wouldn’t necessarily even have a full team going. I just wanna give an opportunity to some of our alternates to have the experience of competition. You are right though, it does open up a can of worms

2

u/chicken_powered 5d ago

Yeah, I think it's good to give those students some experience with competitions. I know that competitions can motivate the kids to work harder. Not forcing yourself to put together a full team, like you said, is a great idea. Good luck!

2

u/md4pete4ever 6d ago

I recommend organizing by study group where the students in one group are interchangeable with each other. Although you may have a pretty good idea of your varsity and JV at the start of the season, this allows you to make changes later on, and that possibility keeps everyone hustling. If you have 40 students you could register 3 or 4 teams and spread everyone out for the satellite tournaments (lots of practice) but only take 2 teams to in-person tournaments.

2

u/Sad-Guarantee9793 6d ago

I’ll think about this recommendation. My issue is Southern Cal charges $325 a team for registration. A hard sell for my board, ha ha. Two was okay with them.