International Online Competitions

I've been thinking about it for 2 years, but I still can't seem to get it together enough to enter my students into an international website competition. So many reasons to do it; so many reasons not to do it! If anyone has any insight to give me some confidence to enter an online competition like Cyberfair or ThinkQuest (or a cattle prod) please pass it on!

How do other educators handle the state testing in Feb/March and the March/April deadlines for these competitions? How do the students in your schools fare if they have spent some of their "language arts" time creating websites and learning all the technical information that accompanies it? I would like the creation of a website to be the culminating activity for all we've learned throughout the school year, but with a March deadline, that is difficult to manage.