Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

I was browsing the FRC subreddit and came upon this rather odd post.

http://www.reddit.com/r/FRC/comments...at_went_to_to/

The poster is claiming that their team got a special invite from FIRST HQ to attend Championships because of their OPR. It seems a exceedingly fishy and while they are not currently registered that is possible given the limited time. There are plenty of high performing teams not to qualify like 3173 and 624 that did not qualify that actually rank above them in max OPR as opposed to average OPR.

I would usually give a story like this little credibility until I see the letter from FIRST or them in St. Louis but a couple people noticed that that 217 is registered for Championships despite not qualifying based on any merit. Source.

A logical explanation is that the waitlist is no longer first come first serve but is instead judged on unknown criteria. I don't really know what to think of this.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Lol that person is misinterpreting the email that was sent out. They send it out every year. It was received yesterday titled "You're Invited to the 2013 FIRST Championship"

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

I hope they didn't book plane tickets!:yikes:

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

My logical thought process would be that 1) they haven't been to worlds so they are a tier one team on the waitlist, and 2) their mentor was hitting the buttons in tims at 12 noon on the first day of open registration. OPR had nothing to do with it.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

No, they are registered due to waitlist actually. I don't think OPR has anything to do with it though.

The email I'm referring to that is sent out by FIRST is probably just a funny coincidence.

Edit: Regardless, I'm happy they are going, they had a solid robot.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Good to see they're going, even if they don't exactly understand why. They were a dominant force at Waterloo, seeding fourth after 2056, 1114, and 610. Bad luck and some questionable picks didn't get them the elimination success they wanted, but they'll be another force in St. Louis.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

I think they deserve a special invitation to the Championship if only for having the best set of practice bumpers ever.

https://plus.google.com/u/1/photos/1...M6Eg9Kur6qElAE

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

That's quite fantastic.


Anyone know how 217 got registered?

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Had to have been waitlist, no other way for them as of right now.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Teams started being pulled from the Championship waitlist this week.

217 didn't attend Championship last year, so they were eligible to sign up for this year's waitlist as soon as it opened and were high on the list.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

I assume you're in the first round of waitlist pulling, since if HQ was going for a 400-team CMP they could have pulled ~20 off after week 5 merit registration closed. After Week 6 registration closes, there will be another round of waitlist removals, then you'll see less than a dozen, if any, come off after Week 7.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

The FIRST generic press-release type email was impeccably bad timing.

1923 had the same problem. We'd been waiting to hear from MAR if we got into the district championship.

Our lead mentor (love ya, Kathy) got the email, skimmed the title as she was driving (DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE, KIDS) and texted the mentors 'we r in'.

We weren't. (Yet.) Oops.

EDIT: Posted in the reddit thread, just to see what kind of email they're talking about. Special invites based on OPR doesn't make sense based on the fact that's just not how FIRST usually does things - bad timing and misinterpretation of the email makes a LOT more sense.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

If 217(or any team in FiM or MAR to qualify for CMP via waitlist, such as 3314) qualify for STL at MSC, does their spot get given to another Michigan team, or is it given to another waitlist team?

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

They didnt qualify at another event so they dont meet the requirements to generate a wild card.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Wildcards don't apply in Michigan.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

I am from team 4039 to clear up any confusion. In the recent reddit post, it was stated that we were "specially" invited. This is an incorrect statement. We were just incidentally invited because of the waitlist. I am very sorry if this had caused any confusion. To restate, we were NOT given any special treatment of any kind.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

There are two types of qualifications that come from FIM/MAR: automatic award-based qualification (District Championship Chairman's, EI, Rookie All Star, and Winning Alliance), and points-based qualification (N highest ranked teams that are not already qualified).

The award-based qualifying teams are not replaced (when 341 won MAR Championship last year, MAR did not get an extra spot). The points-based qualification spots fall down the list until they are used by a team that is not qualified.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

As the team's lead mentor I'll take the credit for getting us signed up online for the waiting list in the first few seconds back on October 25/12 when wait list registration opened. I knew it was a long shot but figured it couldn't hurt.

We didn't win a Regional or Chairman's or an Engineering Inspiration Award. We take our hats off to those teams who did. MakeShift were lucky and got in based strictly on our position on the wait list.

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

Whoops.

Sorry for the confusion, all - this was due to an unfortunate juxtaposition of ideas presented by the mentors to the team today. We were all really thrilled about our robot's performance in our two regionals this year, and were ecstatic about how high we ranked in OPR stats published by others as well as our own accuracy stats compiled by the team.

Like many others, we registered for the Championship waitlist as soon as we could, and like many second-year teams we have never attended before. So when we received notification that we were invited to go, everyone was ridiculously excited. In the ensuing pep talk about how well we did this season and how we surprised and inspired many people both within our own community and into the greater FIRST community, some messages got a little bit crossed, it would seem.

Regardless, all of the mentors, parents, and supporters of Team 4039 - MakeShift Robotics - are incredibly proud of the work that our students did this past season, and we look forward to being able to compete with the best in the world at Championships this year!

Re: Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?
 

No need to apologize guys, I can see exactly how the confusion would occur. Attending Championships is a really great and inspiring experience, enjoy your first one!