Have you ever experienced something so many times that the consistency of that thing was always expected and assumed to occur but definitely never appreciated? This brings us to the classic (and slightly condensed) history of Scioly's favorite tendency: always making the award ceremony occur late and ALWAYS including some sort of technical difficulties. It's really not a Science Olympiad competition without it, to be honest. Long story short, the award ceremony never starts on time. This year, we had the ultimate pleasure of a remote award's ceremony, allegedly to take place on a YouTube live somewhere between the hours of 12 pm and 5 pm this fine Sunday. As much as we should not have been surprised (you're shocked?!) we were a bit taken aback when this ceremony was moved (though absolutely not promptly) to 8 pm. In true Scioly fashion, there were countless technical difficulties, which led to the awards ultimately taking place on a zoom that was harder to gain access to than the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Now for our emotional damage! After having many notable finishes throughout the ceremony (First in Codebusters and Dynamic Planet as well as several Second and Third place wins with a few in the later half of the top ten as well- only missing the top ten in 5 events) we thought we were a shoe-in for states! Imagine our shock (and the utter silence) when we did NOT see our team name in the list of the 5 teams going to states. Some of us started at the tippy top of the stages of grief (denial) while others went in early (bargaining) and a few of us did a full on speed run (depression). Turns out, our denial and bargaining friends knew what they were doing, because we all started questioning things a bit when we saw that we had placed 21st, especially considering our scores on the majority of the events. After some discourse (including a very convincing and reassuring "No mistakes were made!" from the event coordinator after our demand for more information) we finally came to discover that our overall placement (though not individual event placements, those were all still intact) had been swapped with that of CNS' blue team! With profuse condolences to CNS (we're still rooting for y'all) we are happy to report that we officially placed third and will be going to states! Along with our dancing besties, Red Creek! A big congrats to everyone!!!
