What makes an all-star rookie team?

[HonorablePlayer]

What sets apart an all-star rookie team? And what tips the scales?

I'd be curious to know as well.. what do you all think about letting the non-rookie teams at a regional vote for who is the all-star rookie team and factoring that into the scale?

[Madison]

Now this -- this is a great question.

[XaulZan11]

what do you all think about letting the non-rookie teams at a regional vote for who is the all-star rookie team and factoring that into the scale?

This is a lot better post than your first one.

Robot preformance is only a small slice of what counts. All the non-technical stuff (community outreach, fundraising, relationship with sponsors, spreading FIRST message, organization, planning, spirit...) plays a large role. The issue with having teams pick the rookie all star is that they, for the most part, don't know what a team does outside the event. The judges are the ones that come around to talk to your team or listen to your chairmans presentation to learn about what your team does 365 days a year opposed to what your robot does 3 days at the event.

Congrats on your Rookie Inspiration award. Looking foward to seeing your team next year.

[Sunshine]

Now this -- this is a great question.

Madison, stop doing that to me LOL (inside joke) (you beat me to posting again LOL)

I'll answer your second question first.
I would say no, do not make it a popularity contest.
The judges have a better idea what to ask and what to look for.

IMHO,
The award is more than just how you do on the field. It is how you got there. How well do you tell your story? What obstacles did you have to overcome? Did you show that you know the meaning and purpose of FIRST?

[vhcook]

Rookie All-star is a way to recognize new teams that really get the culture of FIRST. A strong candidate for the award would manage, while still brand new, to not just build a robot, but also start to explore the entrepreneurship, business plan, community outreach, and other aspects of the program. A Rookie All-star winner has made a good start on the sustained effort it takes to win Chairman's.

I think the current judging process for this award is working well. Other than teams that have actively mentored them, most of the teams at a regional (particularly visitors for whom this is not the home region) are not going to be that aware of what a rookie has done in their community. It's largely the same reason Chairmans is selected entirely by judge's panel. It's easy to see at a regional whose robots are working well - it's all out there on the field. Seeing who is doing the other parts of the culture of FIRST well really takes a different kind of attention, and those other parts of the culture are what the award is about.

[HonorablePlayer]

I'm kind of torn by that concept... to me a Rookie Team is a team that that is new to US First, they may have started their season 12 months before the first season kick-off, or started two weeks before the kick-off... hence both these teams haven't had the same time to work with the community... Heck just a rookie teams ability to get started is showing a huge effort in working with the community... at least where I live it is....

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=6632&terms=Rookie+All-Star

1.Rookie All-Star Award – to recognize outstanding achievement by a first year team;


http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Community/FRC/FRC_Documents_and_Updates/FRC_Regional_Awards.pdf

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.

Rookie Inspiration Award
Celebrates a rookie team for outstanding
effort as a FIRST team in community outreach
and recruiting students to engineering.

Does anyone else think this is kind of confusing... as the Rookie Team Criteria is (arguably) different than the awards section, and in my opinion the Inspiration Award and All-Star award sound almost identical with the exception of the young but strong partnership effort.....

Also on your comment about what they are doing with-in the community doesn't that sound more like the inspiration award? "community outreach"?

I mean so does strong partnership.... which is why I find this confusing.. it almost sounds like these are "almost" the same award but at 2 different levels of expectation, if that makes any sense?

[HonorablePlayer]

So this discussion is leading me to another question... then what is the difference between these 2 awards?

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.

Rookie Inspiration Award
Celebrates a rookie team for outstanding
effort as a FIRST team in community outreach
and recruiting students to engineering. -Isn't this working within the community and basically what the team does to promote US First and it's ideals and goals outside of competition?

[HonorablePlayer]

Rookie All-star is a way to recognize new teams that really get the culture of FIRST. A strong candidate for the award would manage, while still brand new, to not just build a robot, but also start to explore the entrepreneurship, business plan, community outreach, and other aspects of the program. A Rookie All-star winner has made a good start on the sustained effort it takes to win Chairman's.

I think the current judging process for this award is working well. Other than teams that have actively mentored them, most of the teams at a regional (particularly visitors for whom this is not the home region) are not going to be that aware of what a rookie has done in their community. It's largely the same reason Chairmans is selected entirely by judge's panel. It's easy to see at a regional whose robots are working well - it's all out there on the field. Seeing who is doing the other parts of the culture of FIRST well really takes a different kind of attention, and those other parts of the culture are what the award is about.

So question for you... is a team that has members and mentors that have already participated in US First truly "Rookie"... doesn't that give them an unfair advantage.. if their mentors and some students have already participated in first I would think they should "that really get the culture of FIRST." as they have first hand knowledge and experience....

I agree with your statement.... I also think that a Rookie team's interactions with other teams is important and should count... like you said it's really hard for Judges to know what visiting teams are doing in their communities... I think part of it needs to be walking around the pits and observing the interactions of students and mentors, and between teams, and talking with the teams... finding out their story, how they work, how they got here etc... what their past experience with US First has been (if any), length of time the team has been around.... how many students, how many mentors... etc.... etc...

Don't get me wrong guys.. I'm just trying to offer up some ways to clarify and improve the system..

[rsisk]

You can see the difference in the wording. The RI is the rookie team that "is getting there", the RAS is the rookie team that "is there"

RI = outstanding effort
RAS = exemplifying

[HonorablePlayer]

Rookie All-star is a way to recognize new teams that really get the culture of FIRST. A strong candidate for the award would manage, while still brand new, to not just build a robot, but also start to explore the entrepreneurship, business plan, community outreach, and other aspects of the program. A Rookie All-star winner has made a good start on the sustained effort it takes to win Chairman's.

I think the current judging process for this award is working well. Other than teams that have actively mentored them, most of the teams at a regional (particularly visitors for whom this is not the home region) are not going to be that aware of what a rookie has done in their community. It's largely the same reason Chairmans is selected entirely by judge's panel. It's easy to see at a regional whose robots are working well - it's all out there on the field. Seeing who is doing the other parts of the culture of FIRST well really takes a different kind of attention, and those other parts of the culture are what the award is about.

You can see the difference in the wording. The RI is the rookie team that "is getting there", the RAS is the rookie team that "is there"

RI = outstanding effort
RAS = exemplifying

If your a Rookie Team (at least in my experience)... your NEVER going to "be there" your first year.... coming in... we'd seen video of the games, but never of the pits... there is nothing in the manual about the social aspects of the game, it was the volunteers and safety inspectors that informed us about that... We knew from reading the manual that we couldn't apply for a Chairman's award, but missed that we should apply anyways... as did we have to make last minute adjustments to our robot (as did nearly every team have to make last minute adjustments as well)....

I agree not all Rookie Teams are equal... but hopefully we are all "Getting there" some closer than others"..

[HonorablePlayer]

Wow... found yet another definition....

http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2011_Assets/06%20-%20Awards.pdf

Rookie All Star
This 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.

Rookie Inspiration
This award celebrates a rookie team’s
outstanding success in advancing
respect and appreciation for engineering
and engineers both within their school,
as well as in their community. (Interesting to note that a lot of you have been talking about how the RAS award includes working with the community, but in this text (which is taken from the actual PDF manual) the RI award mentioned working with the community, the RAS specifically seems to be more geared to working more with the students and inspiring them and having a strong partnership effort)...

[mwtidd]

What sets apart an all-star rookie team? And what tips the scales?

I'd be curious to know as well.. what do you all think about letting the non-rookie teams at a regional vote for who is the all-star rookie team and factoring that into the scale?

A good veteran team's support. Rookie teams that have an experienced team's or mentor's support tend to succeed. Take the team from Australia at BAE last year. They had support of two phenomenal mentors with years and years of FIRST experience who in fact won the mentor award for their efforts.


Aussie Aussie Aussie....

[HonorablePlayer]

Yes.. but not all of us live near nor receive the support of veteran teams... I would think that a team that succeeds without that experience and help is all that much more exceptional of a team...

[HonorablePlayer]

Yes.. but not all of us live near nor receive the support of veteran teams... I would think that a team that succeeds without that experience and help is all that much more exceptional of a team...

I should state... we did receive LOTS of support and offers of support from numerous teams in the form of questions answered.... but with just six weeks to build for a rookie team its hard to travel 90 to 120 minutes away to go see another team....

Heck we didn't have our robot ready to actually practice until the day before the ship date.... I know I'm biased... but what this team accomplished with absolutely no prior experience of anyone on our team with US First, the fact we literally started the team the day of kick-off, and the fact we fielded a robot that was described by numerous teams and volunteers as a "non-rookie quality robot", that hung numerous tubes at all levels, attempted ubertube autonomous mode every round, and twice got our mini-bot at least on the pole... Lets not even talk about the jaguar that burst into flames and started a pretty major fire in our robots electronics bay 2 weeks before ship date... Not to mention in that time frame me and my fellow students came up with a video, a web site, marketing materials, an animation, and found 11 sponsors to get us to that Regional... All I'm saying is our accomplishments speak for themselves... if anyone considers these things not "All Star" qualities, because we didn't exist earlier and go volunteer at another event, or submit a chairman's award submission... well respectfully we can agree to disagree.. :)

[XaulZan11]

It seems that your team did a lot and should be very very proud of that fact. Maybe you didn't do a great job explaining to the judges all the things you have done and what you accomplished in such a short time. The judges don't know what you did and why you are deserving of such awards if you do not tell them.

At the end of the day though, you can't rely on awards to justify your hard work and feel good about what you accomplished. As long as your team gave your best effort, it shouldn't matter if you win any awards. They're nice, but if your relying on awards on validate your success, your FIRST experience won't be as great as it could be.

[mwtidd]

I should state... we did receive LOTS of support and offers of support from numerous teams in the form of questions answered.... but with just six weeks to build for a rookie team its hard to travel 90 to 120 minutes away to go see another team....

Heck we didn't have our robot ready to actually practice until the day before the ship date.... I know I'm biased... but what this team accomplished with absolutely no prior experience of anyone on our team with US First, the fact we literally started the team the day of kick-off, and the fact we fielded a robot that was described by numerous teams and volunteers as a "non-rookie quality robot", that hung numerous tubes at all levels, attempted ubertube autonomous mode every round, and twice got our mini-bot at least on the pole... Lets not even talk about the jaguar that burst into flames and started a pretty major fire in our robots electronics bay 2 weeks before ship date... Not to mention in that time frame me and my fellow students came up with a video, a web site, marketing materials, an animation, and found 11 sponsors to get us to that Regional... All I'm saying is our accomplishments speak for themselves... if anyone considers these things not "All Star" qualities, because we didn't exist earlier and go volunteer at another event, or submit a chairman's award submission... well respectfully we can agree to disagree.. :)

What do you attribute to your success?

[Colin P]

Rookies ought to be judged upon what they can manage to do with what they have. Rookies are never going to have the resources available to them that veterans have, and some rookie teams have more than others.
A lot of the jcpenny teams this year have operated on little to no funding (trust me, I'm with one of them) and still managed to put together a pretty good robot. A rookie that can perform at or above the level of a veteran team with better resources clearly shows potential to be a great team and deserves one of these awards.
Team 3539 at Waterford did an amazing job with their robot and completely deserved rookie all star.

[HonorablePlayer]

It seems that your team did a lot and should be very very proud of that fact. Maybe you didn't do a great job explaining to the judges all the things you have done and what you accomplished in such a short time. The judges don't know what you did and why you are deserving of such awards if you do not tell them.

At the end of the day though, you can't rely on awards to justify your hard work and feel good about what you accomplished. As long as your team gave your best effort, it shouldn't matter if you win any awards. They're nice, but if your relying on awards on validate your success, your FIRST experience won't be as great as it could be.


Don't get me wrong.. I'm not.... but me and my fellow students honestly believe we earned a spot at Nationals.... and it hurts that we weren't selected... when they announced our inspiration award.... they mentioned when we started and the challenges we faced... so the judges knew that... When the RAS award was given, there wasn't really anything in particular that the other team did that was mentioned.. (I know this doesn't mean there wasn't and I'd like to hope there was)... but I'd sure like to know what the other team did to deserve their award... It just grates me the wrong way that it wasn't mentioned when the award was given (yet for every other award specifics were given)... especially when this team's major sponsor is one of the Judges and the team happens to be based in the city that the regional takes place.... (e.g. most of the Judges were from the area and I'm sure knew this team and/or it's sponsor)... Don't get me wrong.. I'm not saying thats what happened... I'm simply stating the information... since no specifics were given about why this award was given no one has the answer...

[HonorablePlayer]

Rookies ought to be judged upon what they can manage to do with what they have. Rookies are never going to have the resources available to them that veterans have, and some rookie teams have more than others.
A lot of the jcpenny teams this year have operated on little to no funding (trust me, I'm with one of them) and still managed to put together a pretty good robot. A rookie that can perform at or above the level of a veteran team with better resources clearly shows potential to be a great team and deserves one of these awards.
Team 3539 at Waterford did an amazing job with their robot and completely deserved rookie all star.

I agree.. we are in the same boat... but they didn't give us Rookie All-Star... and we all feel our team did even more, with less than the team that did get it... but again since at the awards they didn't mention anything specific about why the other team got it who knows... maybe they did something spectacular no one else is aware of?

[HonorablePlayer]

What do you attribute to your success?

Dedicated and bright mentors and students... we have a core group here that really worked hard... and amazing mentors... the guy who started our team doesn't even have high school age kids... I think his oldest kid is like 8 or something. They were really awesome about letting us make mistakes, yet were good about letting us know when we were heading down the wrong direction. We even had an electrical fire a couple weeks before ship date and one of our mentors saved the robot by smothering the fire with his own hand... burned up one of his gloves pretty good and still had to hurt...

Another thing that worked for us I think is that they were always there pushing us, yet making us do the work... they would keep on us to get things done if we weren't getting them done they would push us harder rather than do it for us...

also we got kids from different classes like the programming, and video editing, and some math kids to keep the books etc... diversity of students is a good thing... We had one of the best programmers on our team, who is a female, never took a shop class, never turned a wrench in her life.... we blew a bearing one match and had to rip off the bumpers and stuff to replace the wheel... man was she (and everyone else) in there.... we had like only 10 matches between the next one... and we replaced that wheel and the bumpers faster than anyone thought possible..

[EricH]

Something to think about for all you rookies out there:

RAS and RI are effectively the rookie versions of the Chairman's and Engineering Inspiration awards, respectively. As such, the descriptions of those awards should also be considered. Next year, they will be the awards you'll be in contention for (hopefully). All quotes below are from Section 6 of the Administrative Manual--they're either in the award grid or in the award description part (for the second Chairman's quote).

Chairman's: "The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that, in the judges’ estimation, best represents a model for other teams to emulate. It embodies the goals and mission of FIRST."

"The Chairman’s Award was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition as our ultimate goal for transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encourage more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists."

Other stuff from the full Chairman's description talks about partnerships and similar things. I'll let you guys read that when you have time.

Engineering Inspiration: "This award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school as well as their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts."

Note that the RAS and RI short descriptions are similar to the Chairman's and EI descriptions.

One other note: FIRST is not FRC. A number of rookies may have come up from FTC, or even FLL, and have already had established partnerships and roots to help them compete and move up to FRC. They are still rookies, though.

FRC defines rookies as:
1) Brand new team to FRC.
2) Returning teams who last competed more than 3 years ago (option to be rookies or veterans)
3) Any team resulting from a split/merger that satisfies 2) above.
4) Mentors who have competed on other teams don't make a team not a rookie team.
5) If an otherwise-rookie team has more than 5 students who are veterans, they are not rookies.
6) A team who does not meet the guidelines but successfully petitions for rookie status due to a special situation.
(Paraphrased from http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=6632)

[HonorablePlayer]

I'm not saying they aren't rookie.. but I am saying past exposure to US First gives them an advantage and that SHOULD be taken into account... I'm not going to sling mud here... both our teams are good teams... but I think the six other teams that gave us their internal awards speaks volumes about us and if we are worthy of other teams emulating us, not to mention it speaks volumes about what other teams thought of our getting the "FIRST culture, and embodying the goals and mission of FIRST".

:)

[HonorablePlayer]

Something to think about for all you rookies out there:

RAS and RI are effectively the rookie versions of the Chairman's and Engineering Inspiration awards, respectively. As such, the descriptions of those awards should also be considered. Next year, they will be the awards you'll be in contention for (hopefully). All quotes below are from Section 6 of the Administrative Manual--they're either in the award grid or in the award description part (for the second Chairman's quote).

Chairman's: "The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that, in the judges’ estimation, best represents a model for other teams to emulate. It embodies the goals and mission of FIRST."

"The Chairman’s Award was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition as our ultimate goal for transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encourage more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists."

Other stuff from the full Chairman's description talks about partnerships and similar things. I'll let you guys read that when you have time.

Engineering Inspiration: "This award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school as well as their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts."

Note that the RAS and RI short descriptions are similar to the Chairman's and EI descriptions.

One other note: FIRST is not FRC. A number of rookies may have come up from FTC, or even FLL, and have already had established partnerships and roots to help them compete and move up to FRC. They are still rookies, though.

FRC defines rookies as:
1) Brand new team to FRC.
2) Returning teams who last competed more than 3 years ago (option to be rookies or veterans)
3) Any team resulting from a split/merger that satisfies 2) above.
4) Mentors who have competed on other teams don't make a team not a rookie team.
5) If an otherwise-rookie team has more than 5 students who are veterans, they are not rookies.
6) A team who does not meet the guidelines but successfully petitions for rookie status due to a special situation.
(Paraphrased from http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=6632)

No these FRC teams are first rookies... but not FTC or FLL rookies... I'm talking about a team specifically with prior FRC experience..

[HonorablePlayer]

No these FRC teams are first rookies... but not FTC or FLL rookies... I'm talking about a team specifically with prior FRC experience..

Not to mention.. and FLL, and FTC robot do not equate to an FRC robot... this year (being Rookies) we built both an FTC style (minibot) and an FRC robot... and they are VERY different animals... (yeah distant cousins)... but the scale alone not to mention adding pnumatics (which we did) and other more complicated systems...

[lynca]

What sets apart an all-star rookie team? And what tips the scales?


LamBot 3478 tipped the scale for me at San Antonio.
http://www.teamlambot3478.com

They had more energy than I've ever seen from a rookie team !

I was truly blown away by their 50 person team and huge parent/mentor support.

[EricH]

No these FRC teams are first rookies... but not FTC or FLL rookies... I'm talking about a team specifically with prior FRC experience..
Read what FIRST's criteria are again. It's perfectly legal to have prior FRC (FTC/FLL/JFLL/VEX Robotics Competition) experience, and they're still rookies if they meet the FRC rookie guidelines.

Just for fun, let's say that JVN (148), Karthik (1114), Cory (254), Andy Baker (45) and Paul Copioli (148/217) decide to start a new team somewhere. They rope in 5 experienced students from various teams. Let's say that all 5 students have 3 years of experience. Those mentors all have at least 10 years apiece as mentors/students. They find 10 rookie students, and form a team now for 2012. 62+ combined FIRST seasons, 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

Still with the scenario, I manage to scrape up 4 rookie mentors and 15 rookie students. I've got 5 years as a team member, and something like 7 more hanging around FRC; nobody else has even seen a competition video at kickoff. Call it 12 seasons and 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

If I understand you correctly, you'd say the first one is not a rookie. I'm not sure you'd call the second one a rookie, because a veteran (me) is on it as a mentor, but for now we'll call it a rookie, just for the sake of argument.

FIRST's guidelines say that my team is a rookie (mentor status has no effect on a team's status). Those guidelines also eliminate the mentors on the other team from consideration for rookie/veteran status for the same reason. They have 5 veteran students (the maximum number of veteran students allowed) and 10 rookie students; I have 15 rookies and no veteran students.

FIRST would say that both of our teams under consideration are rookies, according to their guidelines. Mentors don't count, and both of us have enough rookie students to drown out any veteran students.

Now, would I want to go against that other team for rookie awards or on the field? Nope. There's enough experience in both sides of the competition--on-field and off-field--that my team would probably get our behinds handed to us. But, under FIRST's guidelines, both of us would be under consideration for RAS and RI and competing for Highest Rookie Seed. And I'm going to be encouraging my team to do their best to beat that team at their own game, without doing anything dirty. It'd be like a raw amateur beating Tiger Woods at golf (before the events of the last year or so), but darned if I'm not going to encourage the team to try!

One final thing: The concepts in FTC do translate over to FRC. Maybe the building doesn't, but the concepts sure do. Anybody from 2753 want to come over and back me up on this?

(2753 was a really good FTC team--Team Overdrive--who moved up to FRC in 2009, and promptly cleaned up the New Jersey Regional, winning the event as the #1 seed and winning Rookie All-Star in the process. Oh, and beating out the perennial powerhouses at the event, teams 25 and 103. After another regional--I forget just how they did there--they became the first FRC rookie to set wheels on Einstein Field in I don't know how long.)

[Akash Rastogi]

.... but me and my fellow students honestly believe we earned a spot at Nationals.... and it hurts that we weren't selected...

Life is tough. You don't always go to the Championship.

I couldn't care less if my rookie team goes to the Championship or not, I don't need a piece of plastic to qualify my hard work and the work of my team.

[HonorablePlayer]

Read what FIRST's criteria are again. It's perfectly legal to have prior FRC (FTC/FLL/JFLL/VEX Robotics Competition) experience, and they're still rookies if they meet the FRC rookie guidelines.

Just for fun, let's say that JVN (148), Karthik (1114), Cory (254), Andy Baker (45) and Paul Copioli (148/217) decide to start a new team somewhere. They rope in 5 experienced students from various teams. Let's say that all 5 students have 3 years of experience. Those mentors all have at least 10 years apiece as mentors/students. They find 10 rookie students, and form a team now for 2012. 62+ combined FIRST seasons, 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

Still with the scenario, I manage to scrape up 4 rookie mentors and 15 rookie students. I've got 5 years as a team member, and something like 7 more hanging around FRC; nobody else has even seen a competition video at kickoff. Call it 12 seasons and 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

If I understand you correctly, you'd say the first one is not a rookie. I'm not sure you'd call the second one a rookie, because a veteran (me) is on it as a mentor, but for now we'll call it a rookie, just for the sake of argument.

FIRST's guidelines say that my team is a rookie (mentor status has no effect on a team's status). Those guidelines also eliminate the mentors on the other team from consideration for rookie/veteran status for the same reason. They have 5 veteran students (the maximum number of veteran students allowed) and 10 rookie students; I have 15 rookies and no veteran students.

FIRST would say that both of our teams under consideration are rookies, according to their guidelines. Mentors don't count, and both of us have enough rookie students to drown out any veteran students.

Now, would I want to go against that other team for rookie awards or on the field? Nope. There's enough experience in both sides of the competition--on-field and off-field--that my team would probably get our behinds handed to us. But, under FIRST's guidelines, both of us would be under consideration for RAS and RI and competing for Highest Rookie Seed. And I'm going to be encouraging my team to do their best to beat that team at their own game, without doing anything dirty. It'd be like a raw amateur beating Tiger Woods at golf (before the events of the last year or so), but darned if I'm not going to encourage the team to try!

One final thing: The concepts in FTC do translate over to FRC. Maybe the building doesn't, but the concepts sure do. Anybody from 2753 want to come over and back me up on this?

(2753 was a really good FTC team--Team Overdrive--who moved up to FRC in 2009, and promptly cleaned up the New Jersey Regional, winning the event as the #1 seed and winning Rookie All-Star in the process. Oh, and beating out the perennial powerhouses at the event, teams 25 and 103. After another regional--I forget just how they did there--they became the first FRC rookie to set wheels on Einstein Field in I don't know how long.)

I'm not necessarily saying such a team isn't a rookie team.. I'm saying that such a team is not 100% rookie and that should be taken into account.....

the amount of exposure a team has to US First before competing is clearly a factor, as those teams know more about what the judges are looking for and what US First is all about..

[HonorablePlayer]

Life is tough. You don't always go to the Championship.

I couldn't care less if my rookie team goes to the Championship or not, I don't need a piece of plastic to qualify my hard work and the work of my team.


Our team doesn't need anything to qualify our hard work as well... but when at least on face value it looks like decisions are being made on sponsorship $$$ versus merit.... well that is contrary to US First values... it's like the debate/question about some teams whose mentors do the bulk of the work and the first the kids really get to work with their robot is when they go to the regionals or simply get to drive the robot.... Now if this really happens or not to be honest I'm not sure... I've seen things that sway my opinion in a certain direction.... but I've also seen some mentors vehemently defend such things claiming "well it still gets kids excited about engineeringing and technology so, it's perfectly in line with US First values".... To me... how you got there is JUST as important as getting there...

[EricH]

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, so we'll see if I'm coherent.

There is no such thing as a "not 100% rookie" team according to FIRST's standards. You're either a rookie or not a rookie. All rookies are eligible for rookie awards, which are judged at the event. There was a case a couple years back in MI where there was considerable debate over whether a particular rookie team was actually a rookie due to various factors (I don't remember all of them, and I'm not sure I really want to go find that debate right now--it got rather heated). The long and the short of it was, they got RAS at least once despite having a few members who were veterans.

Whether or not experience should be taken into account is a much tougher call. How do you call, say, 2753 (FTC experience) versus, say, a heavily mentored rookie team (2809 comes to mind--lots of veteran mentors plus nearby teams) or a complete and total rookie? Some will have experience, but how do you account for it? Do you discount their RAS/RI-worthiness to account for that level of experience, however slight, thereby intentionally putting them at a disadvantage for those awards? Even with that disadvantage, there's a reasonable chance that they'll win.

As far as sponsorship money versus merit making decisions, I have only one thing to say: If you have actual evidence that sponsorship money was an actual factor in the decision, please present it now, ideally to the Regional Director and/or FRC HQ. Otherwise, don't go there. Someone accused a team of bribery back in 2006. The resulting flame war/shouting match was, well... as one of the people involved in the thread (which has since been deleted), I don't want to go there again. (The pattern was like this: "Show us the evidence." "You know that it happened." "Show us the evidence. Oh, and you're not making sense because X, Y, & Z." "You know it happened." Repeat ad infinitum.)

By the way, when you bring up the mentor/student debate: If you should ever think a team is mentor-built, I would suggest that you spend some time with that team. You'll be quite surprised at what you learn, I think. Of the number of teams that have been regularly accused of being mentor-built, very, very, very few (read: none that I know about) actually are.

[David Dawson]

The way the 3 rookie awards boils down in Michigan is

Highest rookie seed (obvious)

Rookie all star - The rookie that did the best in the eliminations. (except the last option rookie bots pick by #1) Waterford was a great example was a rookie bot that was in the #5 slot won it all.

Rookie inspiration- The rookie team that fits right in with the vets in terms of robot quality knowledge of first and its associated manners.

In Michigan districts the Rookie inspiration award is worth more in districts because the all star award doesn't auto qualify for anything and isn't worth any state ranking points. In contrast to the Rookie inspiration which is worth 2 points.

[JesseK]

I won't begin to imply that I understand the way things work for these awards, but I will give you some anecdotes of what we did to win 2006 Championship RAS.

1.) We had a business plan. We ran the team like a small business from day 1. We had a plan for 5-year sustainment, a branding image, colors, etc.
2.) We recruited industry partners, engineering & non-engineering mentors, and students.
3.) Our robot could move and spit out balls every now and then (2006 was poof balls), but it was a terrible contender to win the game. I don't think we ever actually scored except for being up on the ramp at the end.
4.) We attempted autonomous. I think the bot even flipped 1 match.
5.) I think the only outreach we even had time to do at that point was showing the robot off at a pep rally, and demonstrating the robot to sponsors pre-ship.

There's also a very interesting anecdote about how our leader wanted absolutely everything to be purple, including the notebooks that we left behind with the judges. She ran around Atlanta for 3 hours looking for the right hue of purple notebook, too. She's an ex-CIO and understands that the team's image has a large effect on its impact. To this day, we still have a large impact in our community because of such conviction to the program, including it's image.

[Akash Rastogi]

Our team doesn't need anything to qualify our hard work as well...

If you really meant that, we would not be having this conversation.

Judging at regionals is fair.

[SenorZ]

Performance should have a lot to do with it, but so does attitude, and spirit. At the Los Angeles regional this weekend my rookie team placed 34th out of 63. Not bad considering we had 12 students, all of whom knew little, or nothing, about robotics (especially FIRST robotics!) when the school year started.
Another rookie team placed in the top 10. They had a cohesive image, strong teamwork, and undoubtedly REALLY good mentors. They won the Rookie Inspiration award, and I feel they deserved it.
I think an all-star rookie team needs a group of motivated, focused, and committed students under the supervision of a dedicated mentor.