"The Thrill of Victory...The Agony of Defeat"

If you're old enough you, you remember watching the Wild World of Sports on Saturday afternoons.  I am posting the opening of the show on my FB wall.  I got to thinking about this today while I was at the Science Olympiad with my middle school students.

I love competition.  I always have.  I really enjoy exposing my students to academic contests.  And what I love about competition is the drama.  Today was no exception... there was drama.

My boys have worked really hard on building model planes.  They have been working with them all year long.  So today's contest was the culmination of a lot of time and effort.  They were well prepared and I was confident that they would do well in this event.  They had an hour of prep time and practice before the actual event.  We had three planes that were making good flights.  Then it was time for the actual competition.

First, we found out that each team could only fly one plane so that put one plane out.  That was OK.  Next, on its last practice flight one of the planes lost a small piece of wood and when the boys replaced it, it didn't get back on just right.  So, when they flew their official flight, it went no where.  The boys almost cried.

Then it was time for our other plane to fly.  They wound it up and let it go and it took a nose dive.  Now the way it works is that you have 8 minutes to make 2 official flights.  They had to rewind and reset, look it over for any adjustments they needed to make and then fly again.  The boys launched it again and it flew up in the air but it did not fly in a circle.  That meant the plane flew straight into the wall.  But it didn't fall.  It bumped the wall and turned and began to fly in a circle once again.  However, since it was not in center of the gym anymore, every time it completed a circle, it ran into the wall once again.  Every time it headed toward the wall, the crowd held its breath.  And when it banged the wall and continued to fly, the crowd cheered.  It ended up being their best flight ever... one minute, 23 seconds.  So our two teams finished 1st and 3rd in that event.

We conquered today with our sheer numbers.  We had two teams with 13 people on each team.  In some of the events, our two teams were the only two teams.  That made for some great head to head match ups.  In the Ornithology event (all about birds), we had a team of boys and a team of girls.  When they finished the event, the boys came to me and said, "That was so hard.  We didn't know a lot of that stuff.  I don't think we did too good."  The girls were right behind them and came up to me and said, "We loved that!  It was our favorite event we did today!"  So funny to hear such different perspectives.  Just so you'll know... the boys won the Ornithology event.  They said, "We stunk, but the girls stunk more."

We have learned lots of good things in preparation for the Science Olympiad.  And we got to enjoy the drama, both good and bad.  It was a good day.