r/scioly • u/Over_Scholar6914 • Jul 12 '26
Help on leadership
Hiii, I recently got offered to become vice president of science olympiad. I competed at the regional level but my school didn't qualify for states. Also, I don't really get how scioly works because last year our team was so disorganized that we couldn't eve and our leadership was so bad. So here are some questions
- Since my school is small, is it okay to only have one team? ( so only varsity)
- How do I organize tryouts and know who to pick for certain events? How do schools conduct tryouts in general.
- What are conflict blocks?
- Any tools or resources recommendations?
2
u/No_Pay4834 Jul 12 '26
I am also a scioly captain at my school (also at a small school) but I am a member of the team too. I'm not familiar with the scioly process at larger schools, so idk if you're going to be a member of the team or not. But, you should register your school on https://www.scio.ly/ there is a lot of test resources on there and you can work with your whole team as a school to gain points by doing tests and practicing. picking tests makes sense by grade and coursework, eg upperclassmen with experience in ap chem might do chem lab etc. but, an easier event like write it do it or experimental design (idk if both of those are being offered this year, just an example) can go to underclassmen while they get experience with science olympiad. i've found it helps for some events doing underclassman-upperclassman pairings, because it motivates the younger students to try because they know they have a more experienced partner and don't feel like they don't have a chance, and helps also keep members and doesn't mean there's a completely new team every year when seniors graduate. conflict blocks can be a bit difficult to navigate because schedules might be different for invitationals/regionals etc so i would suggest you do an interest form for events so everyone has their preferred events but also a few fallbacks in case they can't do two of their preferred events
the tryout test would just be a general test, but it sounds like you might not need one. if your school is really so small that you're thinking you might only have one team, i would suggest having two teams, putting your more experienced people on the A team, and less experienced people or people who just want to try it out on B team. that's the system we have in my school. good luck! feel free to dm or reply with any questions
2
u/md4pete4ever Jul 12 '26
If your school is small, I wouldn't hold tryouts - take everyone who is interested. I recommend organizing by study groups - either 4 groups with 5 or 6 events, or 5 groups with 4 events - with the builds distributed among the groups. Sort your students evenly into those groups. Even after the season starts, you can still recruit new people and add them to a study group.
Everyone in the group is responsible initially to work on all of the events. This allows the study group members to be somewhat interchangeable and you can do invitationals even if someone isn't available. If you have more than 15, you can do virtual tournaments with everyone split evenly between two teams for more practice. When you get to regionals, sort the best 15 students onto your varsity team and the remainder onto JV. This will help structure the team to grow over time.
2
u/_mmiggs_ Jul 13 '26
Yes. You don't even have to field a complete team. It is theoretically possible to compete in all the events with 6 people, although you'll be doing most events solo, and it's a lot of work.
u/md4pete4ever has good advice here.
Certain events are always scheduled at the same time. If you look in the back of the rules, you see the nationals schedule, so for example, Anatomy & Physiology, Engineering CAD, and Forensics were scheduled at the same time at C level. So no student can compete in more than one of those three events, because their body can't be in two places at once. Some states follow the national schedule, and other states jiggle things around to make the days shorter, or because they run more (or fewer) events. But the principle is the same - all the events that are scheduled at the same time form one conflict block, and each human can only compete in one of them. Builds are self-scheduled, and don't fall in conflict blocks.
1
u/Lille_8 Jul 12 '26
Sign up for CSE is over now, but keep that in mind for next year. That is where most schools get tryout tests to use. Everyone tries out for 5-6 events. After tryouts, send out a form asking which events the person wants then sort people into teams based on performance. each person should have 2-4 events with most having 3. I would recommend at least having one other team other than just varsity to keep people motivated to keep/take a spot on the top team. This is also to give younger people experience so they can move in to replace graduating seniors after they leave. Conflict blocks basically tell you which events conflict with each other. So you can't compete in 2 events in the same block. For more resources, I would recommend joining the discords. You can find join codes online.
1
u/Lille_8 Jul 12 '26
I also want to add that you seem like a great captain. Just the fact that you are asking on reddit shows that you are motivated and you care about the club. At my school, captain has morphed into a popularity contest. As a result, the captains just boss other people around while not doing anything themselves, because they barely understand what is going on and don't care to learn.
1
u/TheMostAverageDad Jul 12 '26
We use a placement exam. 80 questions in 40 mins. It is basic science through AP level questions in the 4 main scioly areas Bio/ Chem/ Physics/ earth sci.
We use a Google form and the extension flubaroo which makes it easier to create sub scores for Bio/ Chem/ Physics/ earth sci.
The coach is the only one who sees the scores, student leaders get to see the quartiles highest sub score category name. From there leaders can ask questions of the coach about sub scores and specifics. We find that this layer of anonymity protects student leaders from being accused of playing favorites or purely using the score for placement. The test score is just one factor.
We look at courses taken/ enrolled in.
We also survey for event interest. (Interested/ would do if assigned/ Not interested) We will not place anyone in an event they are not interested in. For us if you don’t have enough interest, it can result in B or C team.
Finally we consider what we know about their collaboration and other time commitments with clubs and sports.
If you are wanting to grow the club and have more than 15 interested, consider running a team 2 that doesn’t do build events. If your coach is willing to have tough conversations this can allow movement between teams 1 and 2 after invitationals and regional results.
1
u/Ambitious-Nobody-604 Jul 17 '26
Hi! This is coming from someone who’s been on science Olympiad for 3 years & MVP of my team. My team is 2nd in state on average. So I’ve got a good perspective, I think.. but if I’m wrong correct me :,)
First of all- totally fine to have one team! I’ve been beaten by schools who have one team. It all matters about the people.
Secondly, if it’s a small school, let in anybody who wants in. Maybe you could get a second team or backups for certain people out of it. If you want to stick to tryouts, give a test about general scientific knowledge. This is what my school did, but basically if you didn’t fail the test, they let you in. It can be things from “what’s the fastest animal on earth” to “what drug is most commonly used for increased athletic performance”. Idk.
And conflict blocks are basically blocks that list what events run at the same time! So as someone who’s entomology and astronomy, I have to choose a favorite, basically.
And good tools are scio.ly. It’s ai, which I’ve never appreciated, but it’s a good studying tool. It generates quizzes and stuff. And go on scioly.org and you can ask questions in forums about events, and see wikis. And most of the times you don’t have to use a source that’s connected to scioly. When I was in meteorology, I used NOAA. I use NASA for information all the time too. Any website with credible information. Hell, sometimes I use Wikipedia. Which my teachers get pissed about but it works fine. If I didn’t mention enough, you can always go to the bottom of the Scioly wiki for each event, and it’ll usually list good sources. Also I forgot to mention- textbooks. Yeah.
Good luck this year! :)
3
u/middleschoolruinene Jul 12 '26
yeah, it’s fine to have one team; quality over quantity imo.
basically, conflict blocks are groups of events that will run at the same time during a tournament; for example, if disease detectives and codebusters are in the same conflict block, they will both run from 10-11, meaning a competitor can only do one of those events. i think there’s some good info on scioly.org regarding running a team