Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Chris Fultz]

One of the changes in the system with FiM and MAR is that only teams that "qualify" are able to attend the district championship and and world championship.

Right now the FIRST Championship is a combination of teams that qualified by winning certain awards, winning events, winning the previous year, or are grandfathered in as Hall of Fame teams or original FIRST teams, and teams that register based on when they last attended through the open registration process.

Has anyone looked at what the number of teams are that qualify, based on just current year performance, for the last few years of the CHP?

The number would only include teams that won an event (3 or 4 per regional), won RCA, EI or RAS, or qualified out of the FiM system.

[Racer26]

Its been looked at. Given the growth rate of regionals, within 3 or 4 years, without making CMP bigger than the ~360 teams it is now, there is going to be a point where there's not even enough slots for qualified teams only. Every year the open registration group is getting smaller and smaller.

Expect a change to how CMP works in the next 2 years.

[Carol]

One of the changes in the system with FiM and MAR is that only teams that "qualify" are able to attend the district championship and and world championship. .

I believe that MAR teams only have to qualify to attend the district championships, but can still attend the world championship from the wait list. This year.

[Nick Lawrence]

The unfortunate part of this way of organizing champs is that teams who don't build the best of robots and don't have a solid Chairmans base may never attend champs.

I firmly believe every student in FRC should attend The Championship Event at least once in their FIRST career. It's something nobody would ever forget.

-Nick

[Chris Fultz]

I am not advocating one system over the other, i just wondered if anyone had looked at the CHP data to see what numbers of teams fell into each category?

Out of 350 teams, did 200 "qualify" through the season or did 325?

Just asking if anyone had the data before I went to dig.

[Littleboy]

If memory serves correctly, a little over 100 teams were preregisted.

[Racer26]

The number of open registration slots shrinks every year because of more and more regionals starting.

The growth rate is also non-linear.

In 2003, when I was a rookie, 1114 was one of the highest numbered teams.
In 2007, 2056 was one of the rookies
In 2011, we had 3739 as a rookie.

The rate of team growth roughly doubled from 2003-2007 to 2007-2011, and it continues to accelerate.

[Joe Ross]

I firmly believe every student in FRC should attend The Championship Event at least once in their FIRST career. It's something nobody would ever forget.

There are 2340 FRC teams this year. The championships would need to be 585 teams this year, and grow at the same rate as the number of teams in order for this to be possible.

[Racer26]

There are 51 regionals, plus MSC and MARC qualifying teams to CMP this year
6 teams per regional (3 winners, RCA, RAS, and EI) x 51 = 306

MSC and MARC together qualify an additional 30 teams (18 MSC, 12 MARC)

Thats 336. Capacity at CMP is 344, 348, and 352 from 2009-2011.

[Jaxom]

There are 51 regionals, plus MSC and MARC qualifying teams to CMP this year
6 teams per regional (3 winners, RCA, RAS, and EI) x 51 = 306

MSC and MARC together qualify an additional 30 teams (18 MSC, 12 MARC)

Thats 336. Capacity at CMP is 344, 348, and 352 from 2009-2011.

In theory those numbers are correct, but in practice the number of teams that qualify is less than 336, and probably far less. There are a number of teams that qualify via more than one method (for example, we won Colorado last year and got Engineering Inspiration at the same event) which would obviously reduce the numbers.

I guess that each time that happens someone else from the wait list gets to go; is that correct?

[Racer26]

That's correct. Multiple qualifiers open up spots for open reg.

But at the rate we're adding regionals, there's just too many teams qualifying to continue without doing something. I think they should simply double capacity at CMP, by making it an 8 division event, and running a full elimination bracket on Einstein.

I did the math last year, there was enough room on the floor of the EJD to fit 10 FRC fields (8 divisional fields, plus Einstein/FLL and FTC.)

[Tetraman]

If I remember correctly, there is a waiting list you can get on and you'll have your "time" to attend Champs.

I believe that once all of FIRST has been set to regions and there are 8-12 of those "Region" championships, that the World Championship will be made Qualification only, which while unfair to those teams that aren't able to gain the luck necessary to qualify, those Region championships will end up gaining a lot more attention because of their ability to hand out tickets to Champs for more than just the usual ones now. For instance, the original top 8 seeds of each Regional Championship could get bids into the World Champs.

I had a huge re-imagining of the Champs qualifying, but haven't found the right day to post in on CD yet.

[Jaxom]

I did the math last year, there was enough room on the floor of the EJD to fit 10 FRC fields (8 divisional fields, plus Einstein/FLL and FTC.)

But wait...there wasn't enough room last year for more than two. :eek:

Seriously, though -- how much space would there be between each field? Did you calculate for aisle space, queuing, etc? How about spectators; would every field have a reasonable amount of seating?

I really like having all of the fields in the dome. If we can get better seating for the pit fields they'd be OK, but there's still something about being in the dome.

[EricH]

But wait...there wasn't enough room last year for more than two. :eek:

Three. Plus FTC (another FRC field, in effect, but can be spread around).

The stage just hid most of the arena. There has been no indicator of it returning this year to date. This means that half the arena, enough space for 2-3 fields, is now available for use by said fields.


Personally, I see something like this: All of FRC goes to districts, with non-US teams declaring their home area. Half the districts feed one mega-championship, and the other half feed another. The top X in points from each mega-championship go to the Big Show. Say 150 from each. This leaves 40 "at-large" bids, which can be awarded to teams that have never been to the Championship, or to teams that have not otherwise qualified but have something unique that deserves recognition, or something like that. (Or you have 4 mega-championships that each get fed from the regions, each supplying one 50-80 team field, but the teams get spread out at the Big Show.)

[Jaxom]

Three. Plus FTC (another FRC field, in effect, but can be spread around).

Apparently I should have put my implied sarcasm tag in bold or a larger font. :)

Last year Bill kept saying that the concert wasn't the reason for the pit fields, and to expect them to continue. Anyone heard anything different?

[Mark Sheridan]

Apparently I should have put my implied sarcasm tag in bold or a larger font. :)

Last year Bill kept saying that the concert wasn't the reason for the pit fields, and to expect them to continue. Anyone heard anything different?

I hope they changed it, it was very loud in the pits for teams right next to the arenas. It was not fair for those teams.

In regards to qualifying for championships, I am all for it to be merit based. My old team 766 would only go if we won a regional. I really think its more important to have a championship that actualy feels like that it is made up of the best robots of the country.

I would go as far as suggesting that the EI award and rookie all-star to not be guaranteed admissions to championships. I rather open the spots for two "wild card" candidates. Perhaps the EI, rookie all-star and all teams that reach the semifinals are in the running for the wild card spots. I am not sure the selection method. I suppose it could be either by judges or a scoring system similar to the district model.

[Nemo]

One of the changes in the system with FiM and MAR is that only teams that "qualify" are able to attend the district championship and and world championship.

Right now the FIRST Championship is a combination of teams that qualified by winning certain awards, winning events, winning the previous year, or are grandfathered in as Hall of Fame teams or original FIRST teams, and teams that register based on when they last attended through the open registration process.

Has anyone looked at what the number of teams are that qualify, based on just current year performance, for the last few years of the CHP?

The number would only include teams that won an event (3 or 4 per regional), won RCA, EI or RAS, or qualified out of the FiM system.

Here is a look at 2011. Does Michigan qualify anybody other than its 3-4 winners / 3x CA / EI / RAS from MSC? By this count I have 95 out of 352 teams attending the 2011 Championship via pre-registration or waitlist.

12484

[SamMullen]

Three. Plus FTC (another FRC field, in effect, but can be spread around).

The stage just hid most of the arena. There has been no indicator of it returning this year to date. This means that half the arena, enough space for 2-3 fields, is now available for use by said fields.


Personally, I see something like this: All of FRC goes to districts, with non-US teams declaring their home area. Half the districts feed one mega-championship, and the other half feed another. The top X in points from each mega-championship go to the Big Show. Say 150 from each. This leaves 40 "at-large" bids, which can be awarded to teams that have never been to the Championship, or to teams that have not otherwise qualified but have something unique that deserves recognition, or something like that. (Or you have 4 mega-championships that each get fed from the regions, each supplying one 50-80 team field, but the teams get spread out at the Big Show.)

With districts, district championship, this mega-championship you describe, and the "Big Show", the amount of money that teams are going to have to spend on travel will go way up. Specifically, a large number of teams will probably have to fly to two events instead of just one, which is an ever more expensive form of travel. I really can't imagine FIRST would do this anytime soon.

I hope they changed it, it was very loud in the pits for teams right next to the arenas. It was not fair for those teams.

In regards to qualifying for championships, I am all for it to be merit based. My old team 766 would only go if we won a regional. I really think its more important to have a championship that actualy feels like that it is made up of the best robots of the country.

I would go as far as suggesting that the EI award and rookie all-star to not be guaranteed admissions to championships. I rather open the spots for two "wild card" candidates. Perhaps the EI, rookie all-star and all teams that reach the semifinals are in the running for the wild card spots. I am not sure the selection method. I suppose it could be either by judges or a scoring system similar to the district model.

I feel that is somewhat antithetical to FIRST's intent. Part of the point of the Rookie All-star and Engineering Inspiration awards is to send as many people to championships for what they do off the field as are sent for what they do on the field. Eliminating the qualifying nature of these awards would shift FIRST's focus more towards the competition and the robots, which is something FIRST does not seem to want to do.

[Alexa Stott]

What about using a points system similar to MAR (not sure if FiM is the same?)? You get points for certain things (how you do in eliminations, seeding in the top 8, where you get picked, winning/tying matches, awards, etc.) and the x number of teams with the highest points as well as the RCA from each event goes to championships?

[Andrew Lawrence]

It's called the championships. That means that is where the champions compete. I think that you should only go to the championships if you earn the right to go. No offense to teams who buy their way into the championships. I know it's a fun place to be, and the experience of a lifetime, but I think that in order to get that experience, you have to earn it.

Just my opinion.

-Andrew

[Donut]

Theoretically if every state had a championship you would end up with 300 teams with the current 6 qualifying from each state (assuming no overlap in qualifying awards). Team distribution means this isn't a great method anytime soon and there will need to be a way to handle international teams (Canada is 3 or 4 additional regions?) but when FIRST eventually gets their district system in place everywhere it still allows for a Championship event similar to the current one.

I would look at how FTC currently works to get an idea of how FRC qualifying may eventually be handled. Depending on the number of slots given to a state it's not enough to win your state championship, you have to be the alliance captain of the winning alliance to get the invitation.

How is FLL done?

[jspatz1]

The unfortunate part of this way of organizing champs is that teams who don't build the best of robots and don't have a solid Chairmans base may never attend champs.

That's why they call it Champs.

I firmly believe every student in FRC should attend The Championship Event at least once in their FIRST career. It's something nobody would ever forget.

"Attend" - Absolutely, every student should get to see it. "Compete in" - only if you earn the privilage. It would otherwise be meaningless.

[Mark Sheridan]

I feel that is somewhat antithetical to FIRST's intent. Part of the point of the Rookie All-star and Engineering Inspiration awards is to send as many people to championships for what they do off the field as are sent for what they do on the field. Eliminating the qualifying nature of these awards would shift FIRST's focus more towards the competition and the robots, which is something FIRST does not seem to want to do.

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.

[SamMullen]

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.

Rookie All-Star Award
The Rookie All-Star Award celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.

The Rookie All-Star award is actually more like a Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration award than you described. From what I understand, it does not really have anything to do with robot performance.

[Mark Sheridan]

The Rookie All-Star award is actually more like a Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration award than you described. From what I understand, it does not really have anything to do with robot performance.

You are right. I should have checked the first website. I have mistaken the rookie all star for the highest rookie seed.

I going to do a 180 and advocate to NOT remove the championship eligibility for the awards.

[PayneTrain]

The change over to super-regionals/state competitions feels inevitable, but I feel like an extended discussion of this would be very good after this competition season wraps up.

For now, I'll touch on some of my ideas.

Since CMP slots are in such high demand, they should be distributed more evenly geographically. There are around 360 spots every year for what is now over 2300 teams. Only the 14% of teams not already in because of long-term pre-eligibility (HoF, Originals, Major Winners from prior year) get a spot. That means unless your team has merit or luck, students will graduate without going to CMP now (you're reading something from one of those who is at-risk for the moment).

I don't think the field orientations and the sheer number of required pits will provide for the addition of another division, at least through next year. St. Louis maps looked pretty packed to me (but I wasn't there).
I've had trouble determining exactly who controls the MAR/FiM event structure, the traditional structure, and CMP. For the sake of my plan, I'm saying that regional boards run not-CMP as authorized by FRC, while FRC conducts CMP.

For CMP, FIRST gets to take a bite out of the pool of slots before the regional boards: legacy teams, hall of fame teams, and last year's major winners are all going through these FIRST HQ owned slots. FIRST, in this scenario, would not leave at-large CMP bids out on TIMS all willy-nilly for one with fast data speeds.fingers to grab. That's important, and necessary.

Then FIRST HQ would distribute the slots to these remaining 326 (and shrinking because of HoF) regional boards to use at their discretion, with a few exceptions (i.e. the six traditional blue banner awards given at competition must be in your slots, unless FRC demotes RAS and eliminates RIA). It's like good, old-fashioned apportionment in governing bodies. So MAR, who has 100 teams this year (right?) would have 8 spots to work with however they wished after the 6 Blue Banner awards got their bids. They could give them to the next 8 teams in the rankings. They could send more RCAs or EIs or RASs. They could let teams register for the slots like we do now, or they could institute some sort of lottery a team is drafted into after their 3rd year away from CMP. Michigan would have 21 slots to distribute after the six BBAs. However, if 51 won MSC or 103 won MAR or 16 won GKC, they wouldn't be sucking away a spot from their competition and giving it to another random team. It would go to a team that performed very well over the year and earned a spot not needed by a team slightly stronger than them.

The goal of this is to encourage a wide range of talented teams from across the country. I don't have a real beef with teams that have superior preparation winning competitions they deserve, but if you already earned a spot at CMP, we should be giving the one you don't need to a team that fell a little short of winning the competition on the field, not the competition of registering in TIMS.

When we move over to this oncoming system, it will likely never be a 100% thing. I can see California keeping LAR and New York City keeping their events because international teams would get solid rates from flying into those cities. Those areas are also full of great nearby teams that could enter their robot in if they wanted to. Israel and Hawaii aren't moving over to districts either. Yet the change to district system is necessary, inevitable, and important. Just think, we would be composed of 20 or so massive gatherings of strong teams.

Also, realize that this inability to cross regional lines to take spots from teams in that region are mostly gone, with the exception of a few traditional events. Even the Mid Eastern Atlantic Conference gets as many guaranteed bids into the NCAA tournament as the Big East. I know that region x and y are far superior to region z an it's harder to get in if you're in those regions, but hey: build a better team so you can build a better robot and improve your area, or increase the number of teams in your area and benefit your region by adding slots and spreading FIRST.

These are very, very rough ideas, and I actually have been working on developing my thoughts on this to discuss after the season is over with and my mind has calmed just a bit.

[Peter Matteson]

Slightly related topic. I was talking with Bill Miller at the CT regional for quite a while yesterday and we were discussing the number of teams that actually go to champs after qualifying is historically 60% but this year is approaching 80%. They were trying to figure out the driver, if it was the BEP show last year making it a can't miss event. My theory is St Louis is better driving distance than ATL for many teams making the trip cheaper and easier to pull off for most teams.

[Jaxom]

How is FLL done?

There are a number of tournaments (regional, state, provincial, country, whatever) that are designated as World Festival (it's not a championship) qualifiers. Every year they randomly pick some number (around 70-80) that will be eligible for sending the Champion's Award winner to the WF. I believe it's only a semi-random selection; they try to get every eligible tournament a slot in the WF every few years.

Note that in FLL the team coming to the WF is not necessarily the winner of the robot game. Here's the description of the Champion's Award: "This award recognizes a team that embodies the FLL experience, by fully embracing our Core Values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the Robot Game and Project."

It's important to note that this helps avoid turning FLL into a robotics competition. Which none of the FIRST programs should be.

[Jaxom]

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.


Then FIRST HQ would distribute the slots to these remaining 326 (and shrinking because of HoF) regional boards to use at their discretion, with a few exceptions (i.e. the six traditional blue banner awards given at competition must be in your slots, unless FRC demotes RAS and eliminates RIA). It's like good, old-fashioned apportionment in governing bodies. So MAR, who has 100 teams this year (right?) would have 8 spots to work with however they wished after the 6 Blue Banner awards got their bids. They could give them to the next 8 teams in the rankings. They could send more RCAs or EIs or RASs. They could let teams register for the slots like we do now, or they could institute some sort of lottery a team is drafted into after their 3rd year away from CMP. Michigan would have 21 slots to distribute after the six BBAs. However, if 51 won MSC or 103 won MAR or 16 won GKC, they wouldn't be sucking away a spot from their competition and giving it to another random team. It would go to a team that performed very well over the year and earned a spot not needed by a team slightly stronger than them.

I don't see anything wrong with EI or RCA winners who have sub-par robots. If we only allow great robots to go to the Championship Event we turn FRC into a robotics competition (my same concern with FLL, and with JFLL & FTC if I were involved in them, too).

Besides, what defines "sub-par" and "great"? Is the rookie team we drafted in STL last week sub-par because it couldn't pick up or shoot balls and was seeded in the lower half? Even though they have a solid drive train & a decent ramp manipulator I don't think they'll get picked as-is for eliminations in any CE division. But they have plans on finishing the ball manipulator & shooter that they didn't have time to finish before the STL regional & take it to the CE. I'm interested in seeing what they come up with; they could easily turn into an even better opponent-side robot than they were in STL.

The year we won a RCA & went to the CE (Lunacy) we had a very nice robot. Solidly-built, good-looking, and designed around a great idea -- that the Super Cells would be *very* important and that it would take a long time to move the Empty Cells from the outpost over to the corners. Our catapult could launch them all the way, without moving away from the hole in the outpost wall. We made eliminations in both regionals we attended, but our strategy was just too easy to disrupt, and that showed up in Archimedes. We based the robot on a premise that turned out not to be the case. I have no idea if we were sub-par, great, or what. I do know we weren't competitive at the CE level. But the design was good enough that we had inquiries this year from teams interested in our catapult.

I think PayneTrain has some good ideas, but I don't think we have a complete system yet. I'm not sure how the "6 blue banner awards" don't include RCAs, EIs, and RASs, so where the "...send more RCAs or EIs or RASs." would come from confuses me. So I'm interested in what was meant. I do like the idea of more Districts & using a point system that, for example, allows robots that deserve to go but got eliminated in the QFs to qualify for the CE. We just need to find a way to allow teams that almost got RCA or EI to potentially qualify.

Whatever method that ends up being used to select teams for the CE needs to continue to take into account that the word "robot" doesn't appear anywhere in FIRST or in the FIRST mission statement. I think it's very easy to get too caught up in the robot part of any of the programs (I know I slip there from time to time) but we need to keep in mind that the robot are the means, not the end.

[PayneTrain]

I think PayneTrain has some good ideas, but I don't think we have a complete system yet. I'm not sure how the "6 blue banner awards" don't include RCAs, EIs, and RASs, so where the "...send more RCAs or EIs or RASs." would come from confuses me. So I'm interested in what was meant. I do like the idea of more Districts & using a point system that, for example, allows robots that deserve to go but got eliminated in the QFs to qualify for the CE. We just need to find a way to allow teams that almost got RCA or EI to potentially qualify.

The 20 or so regional boards have to send those six representatives to CMP. However, if the region chooses to send more RCAs, EIs, or RASs as their representatives after their prescribed six, that's their choice. I'm not saying Michigan could use their remaining 21 spots for RCA representatives, but they could put a heavier focus on using their bids for those awards than sending high-ranked teams or lottery bids.

Like I said, having to deal with a system that involves getting the best possible showing of 360 out of 2341 teams is not something you can cobble together in an hour. I'm sure (hoping) that HQ has been trying to iron out a solution for CMP since they picked up their toys in Atlanta and moved out west, and realized "Hey, when did this program, like, double?"

[Jaxom]

The 20 or so regional boards have to send those six representatives to CMP. However, if the region chooses to send more RCAs, EIs, or RASs as their representatives after their prescribed six, that's their choice. I'm not saying Michigan could use their remaining 21 spots for RCA representatives, but they could put a heavier focus on using their bids for those awards than sending high-ranked teams or lottery bids.

Ah, now I get what you were saying. I was thinking that the district events would have been called the "District Chairman's Award", but I just looked and found I was wrong. Sorry about my confusion. :(

[Bill_B]

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?

[Gray Adams]

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?

Legacy and HOF (Championshp Chairman's winners) are listed in the chart. Double qualifying does indeed open up spots in most cases.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/championship-eligibility-criteria

[EricH]

Is there a list of Hall of Fame and "legacy" teams that are invited to Champs? My presumption is that if one of them should qualify by other means, it will release a spot to the standby list. Am I correct?
Why, yes, yes, and yes.

HoF and Legacy teams, as noted at http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/championship-eligibility-criteria, are as follows:

HoF: 16, 51, 67, 103, 111, 120, 151, 175, 191, 236, 254, 341, 365, 842, 359.
Legacy: 20, 45, 126, 148, 151, 190, 191.
Note: 151 and 191 are on both lists.

If one of those teams gets multiple slots, then one or more of those slots would open up to the waitlist. Ditto if someone gets multiple merit-based qualifications in one year (or is the winner of a Championship or EI at the Championship level the previous year).

[Bill_B]

Thank you Eric and Gray. Now I have to wrestle with my browser to find out why it denied me my bookmark for that page. I was sure I had seen it before. Apparently, I suffer from a sort of disjoint logic when it comes to navigating the FRC site. Blankety-blank browser isn't helping.

[Dave Campbell]

I compete in Ironman triathlons. The founders of the original Ironman race established a permanant rule to keep about 10% of the World Championship slots open for "everyday" athletes who may never be able to qualify based on finish times. These slots are filled via lottery drawings from all athletes who apply for a slot. The idea is that everyone has the chance to attend, participate or compete. I hope that FIRST continues as is or establishes a similar process to allow all teams the opportunity to compete in the championship event. There are many forms of Inspiration. Perhaps one of these "everyday" teams takes the time to attend a great presentation at the conference. They take that knowledge to build an amazing team next year and inspire their students to pursue advanced education in science or technology. Should that team have been excluded because they didn't have good luck in the match pairing algorithm at their only regional event? This competition is not only about building a great robot.

[Alan Anderson]

I thought the "tiered" registration scheme of a few years ago was reasonable, with the issue of too few slots handled by lottery instead of by quickness to click during the first few minutes of open registration.

[Bill_B]

I had the (crazy?) idea that I would like to see a team listing each having a qualification "reason" for being at the championships. Digestion of the spectacular scouting information compiled by 1114 has me now scratching my head about the numbers of teams that are attending by merit-based rules versus those that are going because they signed up in open registration as veterans. It just looks like there are a lot more of them than I would have supposed.

Would anyone hazard a guess as to what the proportion is, approximately? I just want to compare my results to an external guesstimate to see if I'm even in the right "dome" so to speak.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Since I didn't see the data posted in this thread and I can't find the last thread with this data, here it is.

This year, there are a maximum of 366 merit-based positions (24 for past Chairman's Awards winners, original teams, last world champs and last EIA; 312 for all 52 Regionals [6 per]; 30 for FiM & MAR) to fill 400 total spots. Only 257 (+/-5) of these 366 spots were filled (meaning 109 merit-based slots were either filled by already qualifying teams or chose not to attend), resulting in a total of 143 (+/-5) buy-ins.

To recap:
366/400 merit-based spots
257/366 filled
143/400 buy-ins

If there were more events, or more ways to qualify, there'd be less buy-ins. But with the way FIRST has been growing, before long this won't be an issue. Then we'll have to figure out how to reduce the number of merit-based teams who qualify or increase the size of the Championship beyond 400 (I predict this will occur within the next 10 years).

Did I miss anything?

[Andrew Lawrence]

I think they should make an IRI-like event after champs where the top 8 alliances of each division are invited to play. The top 96 teams of the world, battling it out in the standard competition style.

Then keep the championships open the way they are.

[Raul]

... If we only allow great robots to go to the Championship Event we turn FRC into a robotics competition (my same concern with FLL, and with JFLL & FTC if I were involved in them, too)..
Interesting and popular perspective amoung some folks who mentor in FRC. However, doesn't the "C" in FRC stand for Competition? I would think the name is what it is for a reason.

Raul

[IKE]

I am not trying to be a jerk, but I would like to flip the discussion on its head for a moment.

If the championship is about inspriation of the un-inspired, and you decide that need for inspiration should surpass performance, then shouldn't all of the RCAs, EIs, and Event winners stay home? They already get it! They already had an inspiring experience at their regional, so they really shouldn't need further inspiration. Also any team with a WFFA mentor should not attend as surely they too have been inspired above average level. I would go so far as to say that the most inspirational championship would consist of those teams that have not yet played in any Elims in 2012. These are the teams in the most need of inspiration and thus the most deserving to attend the inspirational championship. With between 12 and 40 teams not making it into elims at an event, and some of those would be duplicates in the district system, with around 50 events, this would be on the order of 1,000 teams which is too many for a Championship event, so we could just allow first year teams, or teams that have not played in elims the last 2 years. This should be around 300-400 teams as many will not have raised funds with the intention of attending a championship as their going in assumption would be that they want to play in elims at their local regional.

I don't think the league would survive such a system.

Just so it is clear, I am not a robot performance guy only. I personally have been advocating a system that allows for more than just the winners to go on. I also would like to see some qualification points for teams that submit and meet the criteria for a chairman's award. I know way too many teams that do a lot of good stuff, but do not document it as they know "we will never win the RCA because team XYZ always does". This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as no one competes against team XYZ. If every team (even hall of famers) had to at least complete the citeria for chairman's (just like there is a minimum criteria for a robot allowed allowed to compete) in order to get to advance to a championship, then you would see some serious chanes to the "Robot Competition".

I tend to think of the Championship events as more of a reward for executing the vision of FIRST than a lottery jockpot or an inspirational event in itself. Offering it as the reward is the inspiration for the pursuit of excellence. though I have always been more inspired by a career path that if you do well in school, get good grades, pick a useful degree, and do useful efforts than buying a mega-millions ticket.

[wilsonmw04]

Seems like there is a lot of folks focused on the ROBOT and how the ROBOT preforms in determining who goes to worlds. I thought FIRST wasn't all about the ROBOT. When did that change? I must have missed that update...

[JesseK]

Seems like there is a lot of folks focused on the ROBOT and how the ROBOT preforms in determining who goes to worlds. I thought FIRST wasn't all about the ROBOT. When did that change? I must have missed that update...

On the field, have you ever thought "hey, that alliance should get to go to champs instead of us -- so we will let them win"?

There are 2 ways teams can earn a spot, and one way is totally in line with what you're saying. My team has never won due to robot performance (though I won't be finishing a Master's degree and planning a wedding next build season, so that may change), and it isn't something we're ashamed of.

That said, there will always be a need for teams who want to buy a slot. I've already beaten that horse though.

[wilsonmw04]

That said, there will always be a need for teams who want to buy a slot. I've already beaten that horse though.

I truly hope you are right. It would be a disservice to a large section of the FIRST population if this went away.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Honestly, I don't think the system is broken, and everyone is getting worked up over nothing. There are set ways to qualify for the Championship. This isn't anything new. If good teams fail to qualify, it does not make the system flawed, it just means that individual team did not do enough to qualify.

As FIRST grows, there will be more teams and more competitions, meaning more merit-based qualifiers/less buy-ins, making this whole topic a non-issue. Although quite frankly, I like having some buy-ins. It gives smaller/less successful teams a chance to experience the big leagues every once in a while, so to say.

[EricH]

As FIRST grows, there will be more teams and more competitions, meaning more merit-based qualifiers/less buy-ins, making this whole topic a non-issue.
Let's look at this statement for a minute, at face value.

Someone posted the numbers already. 366 spots are already merit-based. Let's go ahead and make that 364, due to two HoF teams also being Legacy teams.

In prior years, that's about 24 over the theoretical 340-team limit. This year, they upped the number of available spots to 400, so there are now 36 spots available for non-merit-based qualifiers (aka, buy-ins).

Now, there is already talk of two or three more regional events. Each would get 6 spots. That's 18 available spots for buy-ins next year/year after. Add three more events, and you are 100% out of spots for buy-ins with a 400-team cap. And, might I add, that's twice the size of an average regional event in each division.

Now: looking at the same math as before, 70% of the qualified spots were filled by qualifiers. Some years that's been higher, some lower.

So now, in a matter of a couple of years, you have no buy-in slots, and you have a chance that you get all of the qualifiers so no waitlist teams get in. A couple years after that, and not only do you have no buy-in slots, but you may be denying spots to teams that did qualify--there just isn't enough space.

I don't think this is a non-issue. I don't think this is a broken system right now, but I certainly don't think everyone is getting worked up over nothing. We're looking a few short years into the future and seeing that it will be broken then due to too many qualifiers, and starting the discussion now so we don't have to deal with it then. Aside from the whole "so-and-so is the best robot and won't be at Champs" discussion, which IRI so handily provides an answer for. (Don't tell FIRST, but the Championship is a qualifier for IRI.:p)

[Chris Fultz]

I think the move to the district system will solve this.

More events will support the team growth, but teams will have to qualify through a system like FiM or MAR to get to the CHP. So adding more teams and 'regionals' does not mean there won't be enough spots - the spots will just be allocated to each specific region.

And teams / areas should be pushing to get district style competition in their areas. From a cost / competition / competitiveness standpoint, it will 're-level' the playing field based on opportunitiies to compete, learn, improve and showcase FIRST in more areas.

[Bill_B]

366/400 merit-based spots
257/366 filled
143/400 buy-ins

Did I miss anything?
My preliminary totals have 116 veteran registrations (presuming) and merit-based teams releasing 73 spots. I have no way to measure how many merit-based slots were released by non-attending qualifiers, except by raw count subtraction as above. Further, I don't know how to identify those merit-based from MAR and FiM except for the normal designations. That is, 6 from each I think are ID'd but that leaves 14 more? each? Also not sure how to ID non-attending even if I did know which those additional qualifiers were.

400-116+73=357 or very close to the number given for merit slots.

Refinement continues, comments invited. thanks

[MARS_James]

I know this thread has been dead awhile but something has been brought up that bugs me:

"It is called championship so only champs should be there"
"You should have to get one of the 6 slots at a comp to go"

My response to that are teams 66, 111, 125, 177(Twice), 279, 296, 469, 494, 973, 987. All of them won the FIRST Championship on a year where they bought in as in they didn't get one of the 6 slots from a regional.

So they were good enough to win the final but not good enough to meet what some people think should be the new standard

[Bob Steele]

58 regionals this year. plus 2 district championships (which in effect are the same as 3 regionals each) so 64 regionals worth of qualifiers.

so... 64 X 6 = 384 spots... plus pre-qualifiers...
HOF --- 20?
Last year's Einstein teams --- 12
Legacy teams - 10?

Approximate Number of possible qualifiers for this year = 426

With the new Wild Card system.... the only way to reduce this is to have some of the pre-qualified teams take up some of the qualification positions without gaining wild card slots... I would imagine that certainly more than half of the pre-qualifiers will do that... bringing the numbers down to around 400... which is the number we had last year.


Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?
Is my assumption about the District qualifiers correct too?
Is my number of districts correct?

Interesting... looks like no non-qualifiers this year... or just a handful

[smistthegreat]

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.

[Bob Steele]

That is a good point... I wonder how many teams last year could not go because of this. Would be hard to pull that data..

I would expect that it would be heaviest for the rookie all star teams.
I know my teams first year we qualified as Rookie All Star in the sixth week and we had a heck of a time putting together the trip. We had also won the regional that weekend so we actually double qualified.

NASA helped us out actually..

R

[Koko Ed]

58 regionals this year. plus 2 district championships (which in effect are the same as 3 regionals each) so 64 regionals worth of qualifiers.

so... 64 X 6 = 384 spots... plus pre-qualifiers...
HOF --- 20?
Last year's Einstein teams --- 12
Legacy teams - 10?

Approximate Number of possible qualifiers for this year = 426

With the new Wild Card system.... the only way to reduce this is to have some of the pre-qualified teams take up some of the qualification positions without gaining wild card slots... I would imagine that certainly more than half of the pre-qualifiers will do that... bringing the numbers down to around 400... which is the number we had last year.


Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?
Is my assumption about the District qualifiers correct too?
Is my number of districts correct?

Interesting... looks like no non-qualifiers this year... or just a handful

Don't forget some of the HOF and Legacy teams overlap.
51, 191 and 151 are both a HOF and Legacy team as well the other four 20, 45, 126 and 190 are not in the Hall of Fame yet.

[Siri]

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.I believe Bill said that the acceptance percentage shot up to something around/in the 80s in 2012, from a standard of around 60%.

EDIT: Found it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uTdsIFKjdI&t=3m6s.

[cgmv123]

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.

I also personally believe that FIRST will never rely on teams that qualify not going to Championship for space calculations/event planning.

[Alan Anderson]

Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/championship-eligibility-criteria has a chart with many of the numbers you're looking for. There are only sixteen HOF teams, and only seven "original and sustaining" teams left (two of which are also HOF teams).

[Dancin103]

Don't forget some of the HOF and Legacy teams overlap.
51, 191 and 151 are both a HOF and Legacy team as well the other four 20, 45, 126 and 190 are not in the Hall of Fame yet.

Let's not forget that a LARGE percentage of teams qualified by regional winner are also teams what won RCA, EI, or another mode of CMP qualification. The correlation there is a good amount. So, at the end of the day the number remains around ~380.

Just my 2 cents, as usual.

[Bob Steele]

I agree with that however, with the new 'WILD CARD" procedure... other teams from that regional will be chosen (from the Finalist alliance) to take up that slack.

So, unlike past years, if a team (non-prequalified) is already qualified from another regional (definition is not complete for this yet..) and is on the winning alliance... the finalist alliance captain will win a slot at championships.

The order of wild card, I believe is finalist captain, finalist 1st pick, finalist 2nd pick...not sure what happens after that (not that it would ever happen..)

the only qualification is that if a pre-qualified team (HOF-Legacy-last year's EI winner at CMP, or all of the Einstein teams from last year) wins you don't get a wild card slot unless they have already qualified from another 2013 regional.

Note: If a team wins chairman's or EI or Rookie All Star at a single event AND is on the winning alliance ...no wild card is awarded. The qualification has to be from a previous regional.

[EricH]

So, unlike past years, if a team (non-prequalified) is already qualified from another regional (definition is not complete for this yet..) and is on the winning alliance... the finalist alliance captain will win a slot at championships.

The order of wild card, I believe is finalist captain, finalist 1st pick, finalist 2nd pick...not sure what happens after that (not that it would ever happen..)
Qualified: Win, RCA, EI, RAS, Wild Card Qual. The usual suspects (unless something changes).

Order: After finalist 2nd pick, it's finalist backup (if used), then no wild card awarded even if one is available. So if all three teams on the winning alliance and 1 on the finalist have already qualified, and the finalist alliance has no backup, only 2 wild cards will qualify--but if there is a backup, then 3 will qualify. If 2 teams on the finalist alliance have already qualified, then at least 1 wild card will go unused. (Frank's blog posts are the source for this.)

[AlexD744]

So... what happens if the finalist captain is awarded the wildcard and wins the CA, EI or RAS award at the same regional?? Does the wildcard move down, or does it fall away?

Hypothetical, but very possible situation:
At South Florida 180-1592-108 win, but 1592 already qualified at Orlando. 79-801-1065 are the finalists. The wildcard moves to 79 as alliance captain, but they also win chairmans (no surprise there haha). Does the wildcard move to their first pick or does it fall into the black hole of lost wildcards?

My guess is that it would be forfeit, but want to ask your opinions just in case.

[Siri]

According to the way the program has been explained thus far, it's a definite forfeit:
Wild Card slots are passed to the next team in order only if the team occupying that Wild Card slot has, itself, already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013. [all emphasis mine]

[Craig Roys]

The unfortunate part of this way of organizing champs is that teams who don't build the best of robots and don't have a solid Chairmans base may never attend champs.

I firmly believe every student in FRC should attend The Championship Event at least once in their FIRST career. It's something nobody would ever forget.

-Nick

Attend...sure; compete...???

To use a sports analogy, there are plenty of athletes who have played their entire career without ever having made it to the championship for whatever league/level they are in. What makes a championship so special is that it is extremely hard to achieve.

[wilsonmw04]

Attend...sure; compete...???

To use a sports analogy, there are plenty of athletes who have played their entire career without ever having made it to the championship for whatever league/level they are in. What makes a championship so special is that it is extremely hard to achieve.

We are not football, track, softball or any other organized sport. We are in the business of inspiring students. I think this system will limit the number of student we can inspire. I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.

[Aren_Hill]

We are not football, track, softball or any other organized sport. We are in the business of inspiring students. I think this system will limit the number of student we can inspire. I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.

The first year 1625 didn't make it (2007) we went and watched anyway, and it was fantastic. I highly recommend attending champs without a team sometime, its very freeing and you can learn and see a lot more.

Arguably getting more inspirational sights than operating in tunnel vision mode of having to compete.

And you'll just see even more amazing things when the level of play isn't dilluted.

[wilsonmw04]

And you'll just see even more amazing things when the level of play isn't dilluted.

We will have to agree to disagree on that part. There is something about being on the field with high quality teams that changes a smaller team. If a team can be inspired by watching, they can do that through the webcast. It's far cheaper.

If it's about pure competition, remove the Chairman's and EIA from the field and have them just present. To me, it's not really about robot preformance.

[IKE]

.... I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.

We're gonna need a bigger boat...

Assuming 2400-ish teams for 2013 (there will likely be more), this would require an event (at minimum) of 600 teams or about 50% more FRC teams than last year which was about 10% larger than the previous years. In order to get a reasonable number of matches, this would require 6 divisions. Not impossible, but this would require a drastically different event than what we currently have.

This is a noble goal, but with an ever growing league, I see the league running out of room somewhere in the very near future for even strategy like that. This would also require seperating Regional Performance from Championship attendance i.e. no repeats to the Championship. I.E. if you go one year, no matter how well you do, you will not be going back for another 4 years. Those "quality teams" will not be around again for a long time...
****************************************
I talked to a couple of teams that were not competing at the 2012 event, but decided to go. I think they had a good time, but would have preferred to be competing. I also talked to a team that was there due to a buy slot. I asked them what they liked about the championship.
#1. Getting to talk with students from other teams.
#2. Scholarship row.

Puzzled, I asked if they enjoyed competing there. The respoonse I got was:
Yes, but the first two were way more important.
*********************************
Almost every district event has a team that will eventually be at the championship. Michigan teams will have an opportunity to play with really solid teams.
If you want to play with the best, go to a Regional with the best. Hit up Waterloo, the Silicon Valley, Vegas, Midwest, BAE... You will see a better cross section of teams in a setting where you get more times to play with them than at an event like the championship.

[BrendanB]

FRC and the Championship are moving into a new phase due to growing pains which means buying into the Championship won't be an option in the upcoming years. Is that good? Not necessarily because attending the Championship is something everyone should experience.

I think it is more unfair if we rearrange how to qualify so it reduces the number of winners to keep the buy in option open for teams who haven't attended.

[PayneTrain]

We are not football, track, softball or any other organized sport. We are in the business of inspiring students. I think this system will limit the number of student we can inspire. I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.

FIRST is certainly being forced into this very unenviable balancing act. It is trying to satisfy the following requirements:

Support a competition structure for 2400+ FRC teams
Hold an end-of season event where all divisions of competition compete simutaneously
because of the last point, they must cap FRC slots at 400
Have already promised dozens of those spots as pre-qualifiers from the previous end-of-season event
Must fulfill six-seven merit spots per regional, with six new regionals this year on top of MAR/MSC slots


FIRST preaches sustainability, and for the foreseeable future, allowing all teams a crack at CMP is mathematically unsustainable.

I have elaborated earlier that ten years ago, most teams had to go to CMP to learn from strong veteran teams. Now there are well-established veteran teams in every state that currently supports FRC. If we were to shift to the district system and keep buy-in slots, that means the sport is restricting even more hardworking teams because while they were actually good enough, they were not elite or mediocre. The message you would be sending teams who are not on say, 254 or 148 or 1114's level but still put in a ton of hours to deliver a solid product is not a positive or effective one.

I think the idea of everyone getting to enter a robot of championships is nice, but it is not going to become any less impossible for the time being, nor will it ever be considered a fair method of slot distribution. I can see a shift from the current competition structure to one that supports districts, district/state/super regional championships, "last chance/destination" double field traditional regionals, and CMP.

[Craig Roys]

We are not football, track, softball or any other organized sport. We are in the business of inspiring students. I think this system will limit the number of student we can inspire. I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.

But we live in a competitive world...if you want to get that job, or that contract, or make it to Championships; you have to beat out everyone else who is trying to do the same thing. The "C" in FRC stands for competition. Part of that inspiration needs to be the understanding that nothing in this world is handed to you - you need to work to make it happen.

I believe that the majority of inspiration comes from the six weeks of hard work in creating a robot to meet the challenge of the new game, and in getting that robot to a competition and competing. I applaud EVERY team that manages to do that - it is a huge accomplishment.

However, now we have a situation that not every team can go to the FIRST Championship - even if we rotate to once every 4 years. There would still be teams shut out - there is no way to make sure that EVERY student gets to compete at the Championships at least once in their high school career. It sucks, but that's the way it is. So the fair way to determine who goes would be based on performance.

[wilsonmw04]

The "C" in FRC stands for competition.
And the "R" stands for Robotics, but I guess I drank too much of the Kool-Aid and believe that FRC is not about the robot. Who was it that said (i'm going to butcher the quote),"If you go to an FRC event and think you are watching a robot competition, you are missing the point."?

I do not argue with the logistics of Champs. I understand the math. I also understand that I have never been to Champs. I kept my old team away due to funding issues. Now that I am with a much larger team that has seen more success at the regional level historically, I hear about what champs is like as an experience. I now realize I have done my old team a disservice by not buying into champs in the past. It's now THOSE teams that will most likely never get a chance to have ANY champs experience. If the small and resource poor teams never get a trip to St. Louis, or where ever it’s held next, then FIRST will have failed that portion of their community.

with that, I will not get off my soap box and finish grading these tests that are on my desk...

[jon-s]

How is FLL done?

AFAIK, for FLL World Champs, the various regionals are entered in a kind of lottery. The lottery winners get to go to FLL World Champs. A regional is not excluded if they get to send a team. The regionals that send teams to the World Championship are only anounced after registration for the competitions in announced.

I think the system above only applies to US teams though (or possibly North America), and that foreign ones (due to a significantly smaller number of foreign regionals), at least currently, automatically send a team. I think this is to make sure there are significant numbers of teams attending FLL World Champs that are not from the US (or North America)

:confused:

[BrendanB]

And the "R" stands for Robotics, but I guess I drank too much of the Kool-Aid and believe that FRC is not about the robot. Who was it that said (i'm going to butcher the quote),"If you go to an FRC event and think you are watching a robot competition, you are missing the point."?

I do not argue with the logistics of Champs. I understand the math. I also understand that I have never been to Champs. I kept my old team away due to funding issues. Now that I am with a much larger team that has seen more success at the regional level historically, I hear about what champs is like as an experience. I now realize I have done my old team a disservice by not buying into champs in the past. It's now THOSE teams that will most likely never get a chance to have ANY champs experience. If the small and resource poor teams never get a trip to St. Louis, or where ever it’s held next, then FIRST will have failed that portion of their community.

with that, I will not get off my soap box and finish grading these tests that are on my desk...

I don't think any of us are saying you are wrong. Every person in FIRST whether in jrFLL, FLL, FTC, or FRC should experience the Championship. I won't forget the first time I walked onto the dome floor! :)

But I don't agree with the portion that by not going to the world championship those students aren't inspired or that FIRST has failed them. The mission of FIRST is to inspire students which can be done at any level of competition. Whether in your shop enabling a student to create and build something or at your regional winning an award, inspiration comes at all levels!

[Jeff Waegelin]

Don't forget some of the HOF and Legacy teams overlap.
51, 191 and 151 are both a HOF and Legacy team as well the other four 20, 45, 126 and 190 are not in the Hall of Fame yet.

51 is a HOF team, but not a Legacy team. The 7th Legacy team would be 148 :)

[Craig Roys]

And the "R" stands for Robotics, but I guess I drank too much of the Kool-Aid and believe that FRC is not about the robot. Who was it that said (i'm going to butcher the quote),"If you go to an FRC event and think you are watching a robot competition, you are missing the point."?

I do not argue with the logistics of Champs. I understand the math. I also understand that I have never been to Champs. I kept my old team away due to funding issues. Now that I am with a much larger team that has seen more success at the regional level historically, I hear about what champs is like as an experience. I now realize I have done my old team a disservice by not buying into champs in the past. It's now THOSE teams that will most likely never get a chance to have ANY champs experience. If the small and resource poor teams never get a trip to St. Louis, or where ever it’s held next, then FIRST will have failed that portion of their community.

with that, I will not get off my soap box and finish grading these tests that are on my desk...

Allow me to backtrack a little as I don't want to come off sounding like I don't care about the kids - in fact, the opposite is true; I wouldn't be a teacher or FIRST mentor if it wasn't. I don't disagree with you, but my argument comes from the way champs are set up now...as we all agree, the math doesn't work to get everyone there, at least to compete. As IKE said...we're gonna need a bigger boat. I don't know what the solution could be, but I'm sure regardless of what is done, someone will be unhappy...I say this because I'm not sure there is a perfect solution out there. I hope there is and that someone finds it.

[Kims Robot]

A few things crossed my mind in reading through the latest posts in this thread.

Yes every team should have the opportunity to attend championships... it is an amazing and awe inspiring event. It somehow gets bigger and crazier every year. But let me add a perspective... years ago, when I founded 1511, Rookie teams were not allowed to pre-register. I decided very early on with everything I had that I wanted my kids to see the Championships. So I scraped together funds, we did a ton of fundraising, I booked crazy cheap hotels, and we registered ourselves for 3 regionals. We would thus have 6 chances at getting a ticket to the big show - 3 RAS, and 3 Winners slots. By the end of the 3rd event our robot was beat to heck, but we had in our hands an RAS and a Regional Championship ticket... two tickets for one little rookie team!

If you are 100% committed to a goal, you can find ways to attain it. Go to multiple regionals, pick events that are "easier" to win, make your team a Chairmans or EI caliber team. These are all things that you have control over - IF YOU WANT IT BAD ENOUGH. I'm in 100% agreement that its in all of our best interests for each and every student in the program to see the amazing event that is championships. But the time has come that we can no longer hand out those golden tickets... we need to be like Charlie (who wanted a ticket to the chocolate factory) and find every possible way to get our OWN golden tickets.

As for some of the discussion on the numbers and how are we going to fit everyone in the future, I think this wild-card system is a good filler as FIRST builds towards its future plans. From what I know, with the potential of NE Districts coming online, there have been some discussions of FIRST's future plans. Slides 7 & 8 in the presentation on the NE FIRST website (http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/) give an idea of what the future might look like.

I personally would hate to see FRC have to go the route of FTC where only the alliance captains get to go (all 3 teams often play such a crucial role in deciding the winning alliance), but if we keep up the growth and expansion, even more "widdling down" of the pack will have to happen.

But as with all changes, we will all find a way to manage. As many have said, find a way to rise up with the great teams, and we will make FRC stronger as a whole.

[stundt1]

My team is stuck in a predicament now. We try to attend champs every 4 years so everyone on the team gets a chance to attend champs. We aren't a powerhouse team or a consecutive chairman's team. Each year we attend 2 regionals a travel regional and FLR.

Next season we are hoping to go to champs through wait listing. We are unsure of our chances of getting in we believe it will be very slim this year. We cannot afford to attend 2 regionals this year on top of champs.

The problem with us going on the wait list is there is a risk involved that we might not get in and we lose the opportunity to go to a second regional. If we decide to go to a second regional instead of champs, then we wont be able to go to champs resulting in some unhappy students. A majority of students on our team are looking forward to attending champs.

So I was wondering if anyone knew how many teams on the wait list got accepted last year? It would be very helpful in our decision.

Anyone in the same predicament as us? :confused:

[BrendanB]

My team is stuck in a predicament now. We try to attend champs every 4 years so everyone on the team gets a chance to attend champs. We aren't a powerhouse team or a consecutive chairman's team. Each year we attend 2 regionals a travel regional and FLR.

Next season we are hoping to go to champs through wait listing. We are unsure of our chances of getting in we believe it will be very slim this year. We cannot afford to attend 2 regionals this year on top of champs.

The problem with us going on the wait list is there is a risk involved that we might not get in and we lose the opportunity to go to a second regional. If we decide to go to a second regional instead of champs, then we wont be able to go to champs resulting in some unhappy students. A majority of students on our team are looking forward to attending champs.

So I was wondering if anyone knew how many teams on the wait list got accepted last year? It would be very helpful in our decision.

Anyone in the same predicament as us? :confused:

That would be a cool number to have!

It is hard to say. This year there is the introduction of the Wild Card system along with new regionals so the number of waitlisted teams getting into CMP is unknown and will be less than previous years.

I wouldn't hinge your entire season on the waitlist. In my opinion I would be more disappointed if my team only attended one regional instead of two because we didn't make the small window for waitlisted team.

[Siri]

If the small and resource poor teams never get a trip to St. Louis, or where ever it’s held next, then FIRST will have failed that portion of their community.Can I ask (and others have said this as well) why is the inherently true? I'm not saying it isn't...but why? Is it the dome? The VIPs? The shear number of teams? The presence of the other leagues? The added events (finale, Scholarship Row, etc)? The additional international teams?

I ask because on some level maybe what we need to do is recreate rather than expand that inspirational opportunity. For instance this year, a few rookie students were very clear that the Mid-Atlantic Championship was much more inspirational to them than Worlds. Now of course, it was earlier, we did better there, etc, etc. But I've heard similar comments about MSC as well. They're not Einstein, but they are most definitely inspirational. Why is never getting to go to Worlds, specifically, a failure of FIRST to those teams?

[Gregor]

I don't remember getting the memo that attending championship is a right.

[Alan Anderson]

If the TechnoKats ever lose their prequalified status as one of the original and sustaining teams, I'm going to suggest that we plan to attend the Championship Event anyway regardless of whether we qualify. It would be a lot less stressful, and very likely just as much fun, to show up just to browse the pits and scholarship booths, and to watch some of the best teams in the world compete. As a bonus, we'd have time to go to some of the presentations that we've never been able to see.

[IKE]

My team is stuck in a predicament now. We try to attend champs every 4 years so everyone on the team gets a chance to attend champs. ...snip
...
So I was wondering if anyone knew how many teams on the wait list got accepted last year? It would be very helpful in our decision.

Anyone in the same predicament as us? :confused:

I would recommend proposing 2 options to the team:

Option 1: Attend a 2nd regional and understand the likelihood of attending the World championship is low. Present what the budget is and talk about what kind of "emergency fund-raising" would be required should you get a waitlist spot (Mathematically speaking, I do not think there are a lot of these spots left in the future of FRC).

Option 2: Plan on attending the World Championship whether or not you qualify. If you qualify or get a wiat-list slot, you are ready to go. If you don't qualify, attend anyway and make sure students take advantage of scholarship row, seminars, and ... If you have a strong scouting team, or a students interested in improving scouting, have them join in on some of the other teams there to see how their systems work. Recommend that the students or mentors volunteer at the event to see the other side of how FRC is done...

Like Alan said, I would probably recommend our team attends even if we do not qualify.

[Koko Ed]

If I was running my team I would rather go to two events and earn the right to go to the championships and also involve them in off season events than do one event and go the the championships.
I think getting the most out of the machine you built through higher performance by participating in multiple events is the way to go.

[wilsonmw04]

I don't remember getting the memo that attending championship is a right.

Going to Champs in not a right; It is a great privilege. One that seems to be for those who are privileged enough to live in more densely populated or affluant areas where there are resources (money and mentor assistance) to support a FIRST team at that level. I'm not saying that all teams that go to champs are lucky enough to be in this category, but I would bet to guess most are. I think that this new system will widen the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots." We need a system that will allow the chance to go to champs at some point regardless of their geographic/demographic situation.


Regarding "going to champs just to go even if we didn't qualify": That would be a wonderful option. However, I wonder what my school administrator would say if I asked for a field trip to go across the country to attend a competition we weren't competing in. That would be a rather interesting conversation to say the least.

Sadly, just like the "real world," the playing field for teams is never level for all teams. It was my belief that the waitlist for champs was a sort of equalizer for teams. Now that it has been removed, you will see a less diverse crowd on the field at Champs in the future.

[Kims Robot]

Regarding "going to champs just to go even if we didn't qualify": That would be a wonderful option. However, I wonder what my school administrator would say if I asked for a field trip to go across the country to attend a competition we weren't competing in. That would be a rather interesting conversation to say the least.
There are plenty of times this happens already outside of FIRST. How many Spanish classes fly to Spain for a summer trip? How many orchestras attend trips to Carnegie Hall (I'll give you a hint, I was just up in RURAL Maine, and they had posters signed by students for their annual trip)? How many science classes take a trip to the Boston Science Museum?

But how many non-winning high school soccer teams do you see competing at the state championships? How many softball teams get to compete internationally that couldn't win at their regional level?

You can either look at FIRST as a competition - like a sport - where you believe the best of the best compete for the Championships, or you can look at it as an opportunity taken by all other classes/clubs/activities... and go for the experience. The podunk school orchestra doesnt have to play there to appreciate visiting Carnegie Hall. The science classes don't have to have a science fair to show off their work to appreciate going to the Science Museum.

FIRST can simultaneously cover both worlds. It can offer an amazing competition for the robots where the best of the best compete... while allowing the rest to come, enjoy the show, take advantage of the multitude of different offerings (conferences, scholarship row, Hall of Fame, etc!). But it also allows us to sit at home and pout if we want to...