Regionals

In Ohio, regional tournaments are qualifying competitions for teams wishing to advance to the state or national level. Each regional tournament abides by the official Science Olympiad rules.

Some regional tournaments allow two teams per school to participate, while others only allow a second team to participate pending space availability. Refunds will not be issued to teams unable to participate in a regional tournament due to space or scheduling conflicts. Teams are encouraged if at all possible to participate in an invitational held on the same day. Regional tournament directors will communicate to all teams assigned to their region (including waitlisted), confirming or denying accommodation.

Organizing and conducting a regional tournament requires significant resources. Therefore, depending on the funding available in your region, it may be necessary for your team to pay an additional regional tournament fee. You may find information about your specific regional tournament and any other fees by contacting the regional tournament director.

* Please Note: All second teams are waitlisted in Ohio until tournament directors can determine space accommodations based on team registrations.

Regions

1: Northeastern

2: Western

3: Northern

4: Southeastern

5: Central

6: Southeastern

7: Northwestern

New Regional Bounds For The 2027 Season

OHSO will be consolidating our existing eight regions down to seven by dissolving the Eastern Region. Eastern region teams will be absorbed into the existing Northern, Northeastern, and Southeastern regions.

The new Northern and Northeastern regions will continue to operate a joint NEON Regional Tournament, which will be hosted at the University of Akron on March 13, 2027.The Southeastern region will continue to be hosted at Marietta College, with the 2027 tournament date still pending.

We understand this transition directly impacts your teams' planning, competition experience, and state tournament qualification. We are committed to transparency regarding:

The Purpose behind the boundary redefinition
The Process used to determine the new boundaries
The Impact on teams and state tournament bids

The Purpose

The current OHSO regional boundaries have been in place for over a decade and were created when OHSO had ~30% more active teams. Indeed, the Eastern, Northeastern, and Northern regions all exist within a fairly compact geographic area, yet historically had too many teams to compete in one tournament and were therefore run separately.

As the number of teams and volunteers in this area has decreased, the Northern and Northeastern regions independently made the decision four years ago to start hosting their tournaments together, albeit with separate awards. All three regions then ran a joint tournament in 2025, with Eastern returning to a separate tournament this year. These joint tournaments have been a tremendous success, providing a high quality experience for the students while reducing the logistical and volunteer burden on individual teams and tournament organizers.

While our long-term goal is to return to pre-COVID participation levels, we need to base our decisions today on the anticipated registrations, needs, and resources for the upcoming 2026-2027 season.

The Process

This began as an organic discussion in debriefing our 2026 regional tournaments. These conversations identified a vital need to pool regional resources to protect local budgets, prevent volunteer burnout, and reduce the administrative strain on directors. We then undertook a more formal review of our current regional boundaries, including mapping out every registered team statewide. We reviewed historical trends in team registrations and opportunities for program growth and new team recruitment. We evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of various regions and host sites. The impacted Regional Directors used this data to identify appropriate new regional boundaries for all impacted schools and confirm the viability of a combined tournament for NEON teams at the University of Akron.

The Impact

We expect that the NEON Regional Tournament at the University of Akron and the Southeastern Regional Tournament at Marietta College will afford all of our students a high-quality, competitive experience.

State bids will continue to be allocated proportionally between regions based upon team registrations. To address some anticipated concerns about state tournament bid allocations, here are estimates of how bids would have been allocated this year had the new boundaries already been in effect: