So, the upcoming Ohio States has prelims this year. I have a cool-ish bind or two that I’m gonna do, but I’m wondering, should I save it for finals? If I use them in prelims, I’m worried my final would be even less exciting. But I’m not even sure I’ll make finals, it’s my first time competing. I’m using this as both a competition and just for experience. What do you guys do? And for prelims, should I be very concerned with syncing with the music?
for prelims i just stick to tricks that i know i can do consistently, then i go for any riskier stuff that i want to do in finals.
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Use’em for Finals. Get a strong prelims. As long as you make finals, you got braggin rights and people will notice you.
Since this is your first contest and your guessing your not gonna make finals just go all put on prelims, give it ur best. And if you make the finals, whatever, youve come far enough 
Can you do them clean and reliably? If so put them in the prelim. If not, skip them. Going clean is very important for prelims.
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I would put everything into prelims and leave the experimental stuff for finals. This is what I’m going to do for CalStates next year. I’m glad I still have months to improve.
Whilst we’re on the subject I’ve been wondering:
Can you do the same routine (or at least part-of) in prelims as you would for finals, or will the judges count that against you?
Once finals start, it’s a clean slate, and whatever you did in prelims won’t matter.
It is pretty much expected that a player will use tricks from his/her planned finals freestyle for prelims. Judges won’t hold that against you. Some players rework the order and sync it up to different music for prelims since it is a shorter time limit, but you don’t have to do that. Unless you don’t think your finals tricks are consistent enough or will score well enough to get you into finals, using the same tricks for both (but with more tricks in finals, obviously) is the norm.