Welcome to a New Science Olympiad Year!

Can you believe that it is already time to start thinking about Science Olympiad again?   This will find most of you already in school and starting your new school year as well. 

Since our state tournament in April, there have been many changes from the national office all the way down to our regions.  Over the course of the next month, there will be many new postings on the website regarding new changes in the state and at the national office on the website.

One of the most important changes in our state will be the addition of a new region in the south central part of the state.  These are people who were driving more than 2 ½ hours to get to a regional.  With budget cuts hitting everyone, the Board of Directors took a good hard look at all of our teams and their travel times.  Based on what was discovered, the Board of Directors voted to redistrict in order to put teams closer to their regional competition in the hopes that this would save schools some money and travel time.  This was due to take effect in the 2010-2011 season, but because of school closings and other issues in the educational system, we decided to wait it out to see if we would be losing schools and rendering some districts without teams.

We are happy to report that we did not lose any schools, but did have a drop in the number of teams that they registered instead.  We actually had new teams and continue to grow in the State of Missouri.  With that being said, we are going ahead with the new re-districting.  We are currently having the new map drawn and expect it to be on the website by September 11^th.  We will have a list of the regions with the counties listed on the website by September 4^th.

The registration forms for the coaches clinic and the team registrations are posted now.    We are allowing students at the clinic again this year.   We are pleased to announce that there will be no increase in the coaches workshop or the registration fee for 2011-2012. 

Also, the date for the workshop and state are now listed on the website.  We will be doing the workshop on October 1^st, 2011.  The state tournament will be April 14^th, 2012 at University of Missouri-Columbia.

Please check the website often for new updates.  There will also be a coaches meeting at the end of the workshop, as usual, where we will cover a great many of these updates. 

I wish your teams good luck this year and we look forward to a great year!

Patty Palmietto, State Director and the Board of Directors of Missouri State Science Olympiad.