Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Man, there's no rest for the weary, is there? ;). The match footage should be up within the next few days. Thanks for the recognition. :)

I might post some more regarding MAR Champs later, but after the past two brutally tough and stressful days, I'm beat. Never though I'd say this, but man I'm glad to be back laying in my dorm bed. :P

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

The 20 teams that will represent MAR at Champs (assuming no declines):

11 (CMP Winner, Hawaii CA)
25 (EI)
56 (Points)
103 (HoF)
193 (Points)
222 (Points)
225 (DC Winner)
303 (MAR CA)
341 (CMP Winner, HoF)
365 (HoF)
484 (Points)
1089 (Points)
1218 (MAR CA)
1640 (Points)
1676 (EI)
2016 (Queen City EI)
2180 (Points)
2590 (CMP Winner)
2607 (Virginia Winner)
5310 (RAS)

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

I must say, we were doubly grateful to be next to you guys.
Seriously, the vast majority of our scouting data was written in Pascack Pioneer-provided pencil.

How's that for alliteration!:p

7th points slot is from 11 (winner) prequalified with HI CA

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Thanks for the clarification, I was under the interpretation that 11 and 341 would "black hole" their winner's slots. Was any information given to teams about this situation? Why does 11 create another points slot and not 341? Is it because 11 qualified this year and 341 pre-qualified?

In past years MAR has published supplemental rules; I can't seem to find them for this year, do they exist?

EDIT:
From the 2013 supplemental rules:
So if the rules stayed the same then their should be eight points slots.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

That is not in MAR's 2013 Supplemental Rules Statement.

The spot is from MORT as Brian states.

The final 2014 Rankings are on the MAR website as well as the list of 20 MAR teams qualifying for St. Louis.

Congrats and Good Luck to all the teams representing MAR.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Where is the 2013 MAR rules supplement? As I stated in my post, that was from Michigan.

This is the old link to the 2013 MAR rules supplement: http://www.midatlanticrobotics.com/2...emental-rules/ but it doesn't work anymore.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

I haven't been able to find them all season either.

Here's the link to 2013's Supplemental Rules: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1407395/2013%20MAR%20Docs/2013%20SUPPLEMENTAL%20RULES%20FOR%20MID%20ATLANTIC %20ROBOTICS%20revised%203_28_2013.pdf

In it, it states:

So, assuming these rules were to remain the same for 2014, I too was surprised that 7 point slots were given out, after it says that The 8 award spots may not be filled by any team(s) other than the above 8 award winners and The remaining 6 spots will go to the top-ranked teams.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Thanks for the link Ryan.

There's a similar situation in Michigan this year. Team 27 won the Chairman's Award at Northern Lights and won the State Championship. Does anyone know if another points slot was created there too?

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

FIRST standardized the District Points System this year, so I wouldn't look to past district supplemental rules for any guidance.

My speculation: this is essentially a Wild Card Spot. If you look at the FRC 2014 Season Wild Card Calculation Step 2 states repeatedly states qualified at a prior event "in 2014 only". So 11 would meet this criteria and 341 would not. The only difference for districts seems to be that the Wild Card is given as an extra points spot, not specifically the Finalist Alliance as in Step 4. In MAR's case, either calculation results in the same team: 484

Hopefully, FIRST clarifies this for 2014 and addresses it in the 2015 document. The District Standardization is new so there were bound to be confusing situations. If you look at the Championship Eligibility, all District slot allocations are still listed as TBD. I also hope the Wild Card system in the future allows Wild Cards to be created for all prequalified teams. No team wants to be a "black hole" destroying qualification slots for other teams, (especially recent competitors they know & respect). The Wild Card was created to avoid this situation. However, as long as FRC has more Championship qualification slots than the max number of teams that have actually competed in a single Championship Event, something has to give.

EDIT:
This 11/7/13 FRC Blog explains the general principles. I think the key sentence is "Districts are able to send to the FIRST Championship the number of unique teams allocated to them using the proportional representation model, plus their unique pre-qualified teams." Again this is general idea early on, not specific to any situation.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

The Robotics Competition Agreement covering the 2014 FRC season between MAR and USFIRST does not include a Supplemental Rules section. All of the policies governing the Point Ranking System and allocation of FRC Championship slots for district play in FiM, MAR, New England, and Pacific Northwest have been decided by the FRC Director and have been referenced in a variety of blog posts, but there is no single reference for this information yet. These policies include some minor variations among regions for 2014. We look forward to full alignment among regions and more complete documentation in 2015.

The final 2014 rankings and CMP invitations posted on the MAR website have been reviewed by FIRST's Area Manager for MAR. We believe they are correct according to our understanding of the aforementioned policies.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Thanks to everyone who made MAR Champs possible! It was a fantastic and really well run event. I really liked the field layout, as basically every spectator had good seats.

2590, you have (in my opinion) the best robot in MAR. Best of luck at champs!

To our friends on 11 and 341, you rounded out the winning alliance really well. I wouldn't have rather lost to any other alliance at the event.

Thanks to 1218 and 357 for making a run to the semis with us. 1218, we were really happy to finally get to play with you, and 357, you fell far too far in the draft. The auto issues were unfortunate, but we made a good run of it.

Congratulations to 1218 and 303 for their Chairman's awards and 1676 and 25 for their EI awards! All are quality programs that we on 225 aspire to be like.

I was also super impressed with the robots and driving skill of 193 and 1640 -- both of these robots will be forces to be reckoned with at champs.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

Rounding out our robotics season, I would like to say congratulations to all teams in MAR who competed this past weekend on behalf of the Firebirds. Despite it being a very hectic weekend, it was an awesome experience, and we are extremely fortunate to be apart of it. It was an honor to compete with an against such inspirational teams that we aspire to be like in many ways. Back to real life now... Good luck to all teams competing at worlds!

BTW, Can someone bring me back buttons??? :) I have a bulletin board in my room that I would love to fill, and I only have one more year to fill it if I ever get to.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

So your people posted points on paper with Pascack Pioneer-provided pencils? :D
No, seriously: I wish I'd had more time to spend in your pit. I like your robot though, and it was truly our pleasure to be next to you.
Re-quoted for truth.

In addition to congratulating everyone going to St Louis, I'd also like to congratulate Team 2016...who wasn't even there*, but managed to snag TWO major awards for their mentors: Woodie Flowers Finalist Award for Dave Pechter, and Volunteer of the Year award for David Morris (who was, not surprisingly, a volunteer at the event. David was the guy shaving the carpet after almost every match on Saturday. I need to get him a Bic Disposable for CMP... :rolleyes: )

I managed to snap this photo as the MAR previous Woodie Flowers winners gathered to present the award to Dave.


My heart is broken for our friends on Team 75, Team 223, and Team 3314, all of whom truly deserve to be headed to CMP. It is a small consolation that they each brought home a trophy this weekend. We will do our best to represent MAR on your behalf.

A shout out to Team 4035 for their Judge's award. To those outside MAR, this is the little team that can. Not a large team, not a wealthy team, but with more heart than any team I've met. And I've met a few.

Now back to my recovery from the weekend...


*They declined to attend the MAR CMP because they'd already qualified for St Louis by winning a well-deserved EI at Queen City, allowing another team (like Dawgma 1712, Firebirds 433 and RooBotics 4373) to attend and get the thrill of MAR CMP. How graciously professional of them! 2607 also declined MAR CMP for the same reason, having won at Virginia. Team 103 also declined (They are a HoF team) but I can't say if they wanted to open up a spot at MAR CMP for someone or had other reasons.

Re: MAR Championship 2014
 

The winners of the District Championship cannot consume both a winner slot and a points slot (i.e. 2590 does not consume a points slot despite having the the highest point total) For the purposes of this scenario, pre-qualifying is the same as having one of the 10 highest point slots. By winning, we are then skipped over in points, meaning the points slot we took is basically ignored and the number of remaining spots goes back to up 7.

I doubt it has any reason to do with a wildcard and the fact that 484 was both a finalist and the next highest in point ranking is coincidental. This type of scenario was not specified in the 2014 district ranking system, but I'm assuming that's what happened.