Hello Coaches,

Let me begin by saying that after almost 30 years of dedicated service, our beloved leader of NY City SciOly, Alice Kasten, has decided to step down as Regional Coordinator and has passed the baton to me. Thank you so much Alice for making SciOly such a big part of your life, and in turn, our lives as well. My name is Mike Cubbin and I am currently one of the coaches for the Bay Academy team and now the coordinator for all NY City middle school teams. As I have been telling Alice, she has left me big shoes to fill, but I will try my best to fill them by exceeding her - and your - greatest expectations. I hope you are all excited about the upcoming year as I believe it is going to be our best yet! I have two goals for this upcoming year:

• Register at least 40 teams for the Division-B Regional competition in March.
• To have at least one team of our best and brightest middle schoolers make it to Nationals this year!

The more teams we have, the stronger the competition and the better our chances of putting the NY City SciOly onto the National stage. In addition, the more teams we register, the more will have the opportunity to go to States since the number of teams chosen of based on the number we register. This e-mail is to introduce me to you and to ask for your help and support in moving ahead!

I have been involved with SciOly since a few months before the 2015 Regional competition, when I first met Alice and discovered her passion for having NY City students compete in SciOly. I knew that this was going to be a big part of my future, so I understand very well how you feel. To this end, I would like to keep wide open communications between us so that by the time Regionals roll around (March 7, 2020) every one of you will be as prepared as you can possibly be to head to States! Any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me!

In updating the website and I have changed the domain from newyorkcityscioly.org to nycsciolyb.org (to distinguish it from the C-Division, or high school, website) so please change your bookmark if necessary. Some of the upcoming things you need to know about and that will be a big part of success this coming year:

• Coaches Meetings - To prepare all coaches for the new season, we will meet at both a Manhattan location and a Queens location. You are required to attend only one of these meetings. You will find more information here (scroll to the bottom).
• Invitationals - It is one thing to practice with your team to prepare for Regionals. It is another to practice with other teams to improve your game. The first, and closest, Invitational is the Long Island Science Olympiad (LISO) which will be held at Syosset High school this year. It is also one of the best for NY City teams to attend since we can get there using yellow buses (not coach buses!) I am listing all Invitationals on the website and will update the contact information as soon as it becomes available. You must register for Invitationals quickly as they fill up fast!
• Test Trading - I will be speaking about this extensively this year at the coaches meetings (and even before) as it came to light last year that many teams were unfamiliar with the practice of trading tests. Our team and many others began trading tests extensively last year and it helped us to place much higher at competitions. I will speak with everyone regarding this practice at the coach's meetings, or if you like, I can send out a separate document detailing how to best go about collecting, trading, and creating your own tests. Please contact me about this and I will be happy to share any information I have.
• Division A - This is the elementary Science Olympiad program. Many of the top competing states have elementary school "competitions" take place which is one reason why they consistently produce top winning teams Division B/C teams. At this year's Regional competition we are going to be introducing a "non-competing" Division A set of events to be held in one of the rooms at the competition site (if I can arrange the extra room and manpower). So if you know of any of the elementary schools that feed to your school, or if you have students with younger siblings who are interested, or if you would like to help organize this please start to talk this idea up a little bit and let me know what you can do. I think this will help push us forward as well!

I will be updating the website frequently so please keep checking to make sure you are up to date on all forthcoming information. If you have any questions for me now, please ask and I will be of any help I can be. If you have any ideas, please do not hesitate to "Reply ALL" (since others may either have the same question or possess a solution I had not thought of.  Looking forward to meeting and speaking with you all soon!

Best regards,

Mike