[FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Posted on the FRC Blog, 8/31/16: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...-for-districts

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

So, who wants to do the math to figure out how many estimated waitlist spots each champs gets now?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I'm not sure about the exact number of Regionals, but:

That's 201 District spots at HalfchampsN and ~20 Regionals getting 7 each. So that leaves around 59 waitlist spots.

HalfchampsS would have 88 District spots and ~29 Regionals? So they'd get 109ish waitlist spots.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Ok I like this a lot gets rid of my concern about our waitlist tokens becoming useless. Thanks frank!

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

This was a predictable change, but I'm still disappointed.



Under the old system the North Championship would have ~265 teams from district areas but under this system they'll only have 201. Given that district teams are much more competitive than waitlist teams, this will seriously decrease the quality of championship play.

I had assumed that the purpose of waitlist spots was to fill the gaps when regionals didn't send enough teams to fill out the championship, but FIRST doesn't seem to share that view. What is the point of waitlist teams? Why do the extra 64 waitlist teams deserve to go to the North Championship more than the district points teams do? Shouldn't we reward success on and off the field more than a lottery?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Teams getting the "championship experience"


It may be a good thing text doesn't convey tone.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Houston Champs districts get a pretty huge spike in slots! Roughly 40% (give or take) increases for each of PNW, North Carolina, and Peachtree.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I don't think that analysis applies here. Michigan (for example) sent 76 teams. if ~56% made it to the playoffs, that's only ~43 teams. How competitive are the other 33 teams when compared to the waitlist spots? Because this change doesn't really affect those 43 teams - they'll get in either way. It's the team's further down in the district points that are affected, and I haven't seen an analysis that really tells us how competitive those teams are, when compared to the waitlist teams. Do that same analysis comparing the achievement of all waitlist teams against the lower 10% of district teams (sorted by district points), and then we can talk about how competitive or not this decision is.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Listen I am from a team who could seriously benefit from going to Champs and one with 8 waitlist tokens.

We have been a team since 2009 and have never even come close to qualifying for Champs. Many members despite my best efforts still don't realize how big first really is. The experience of Champs would certainly seriously help our team.

The reason half Champs became a thing was to give more teams the Champs experience. Before this change district teams did have an easier time qualifying despite the wildcard change. Now it's pretty balanced. Don't forget waitlist tokens can go to regional and district teams.

Now I still support 1 Champs but, if we are going to have 2 let's have other teams like mine and maybe ones even farther away from breaking through get a taste of what's out there.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Nothing against our friends to the north but nope. South Champs is in Houston.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I agree with the point of limiting the number of district teams going to north champs differently then the south champs.

As for waitlists and district teams, why not just leave waitlist for regional teams and give districts the full allotment? As I see it both waitlist and districts were way to help teams that the regional system was leaving behind.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

As far as I am aware admission to The Championship Event has been and will continue to be free.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

The direction FIRST is taking is more about giving everyone a better chance of going to championships with an emphasis on weaker/underdeveloped teams. In this case though, they are taking away earned slots in favor of the waitlist. Besides decreased competitiveness, one major con might be that mid tier teams find it increasingly harder to qualify on their own merit since mid tier teams(I would think) occupy the bottom 10 percent of teams that qualify from a district. Overall I don't really approve of any decreased competitiveness at this point but FIRST has chosen their path and they might as well go as far as they can if they think this is for the best.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Interesting that the districts going to the south post season expo gained 40%, 55% and 36% more teams, whereas the teams going to the north expo gained 1 or 2 spots at maximum.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

That's the problem with millennials these days!!! They think they deserve everything and that the world should be handed to them on a silver platter. Everyone wants a participation trophy because all that matters is that they "tried" and there's no such thing as "winners". Back in my day you didn't have a right to go to a championship, you had to earn your way there. When I coached my son's little league we never made it to the state championships because we weren't good enough. After four years of not qualifying do you think I complained that my team was missing out from the "championship experience" because they weren't playing well enough? Of course not! We didn't need a championship to recognize the kids on our team and we sure didn't need one to inspire them. If you want to go to the championships then work harder, don't try and lessen the value of the championships by letting everyone in.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

However, many teams and school districts consider that if you're not going to go to compete, you shouldn't go at all. Not all, but many. And it's not like the Championship has been within a few hours of NYC in the last 20 years--Orlando, Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis, St. Louis/Houston... It's hard enough to convince a district that you should go when you win your way there, imagine doing it without that win.


Calm down. THIS Championship is about inspiration. If you're going to complain about non-competitive teams going, you need to start complaining to HQ. HQ has, for better or worse, determined that all teams should at least have the chance to go every 4 years on average, and has set up their systems to allow/encourage that. If it was all about the most competitive team, they'd have kept it locked down at 400 teams and tightened the selection criteria. Back before my time, all you had to do was register and go! Then once every team had a regional in reasonable range, you had to do a regional before you could do the nationals, but every team could go. And then they had to trim it down even more, so if you didn't win your way in and you were an even team, you could go in even years (and same for odd teams in odd years). Then they had to cut the qualification even more--now they want to make sure that everybody has a chance to go every 4 years. That's an HQ decision.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

That's a very good point. Looking at the data, the bottom 10% of district teams only had 3 selected out of 22 (teams 193, 3539 and 3663). That's only 13.7%, meanwhile 16.7% of waitlist teams were selected for division playoff matches.

I'm pretty surprised about that, since all waitlist teams from district areas would have fewer district points than the points teams. Either regional waitlist teams are doing well enough to pull up the average or district points aren't doing that a good a job of sending the best teams.


I don't think you're being serious, but it's important to note that nobody else is talking about how many teams are at champs, just how to pick those ones (points based or lottery). The same number of teams are getting the "championship experience" either way.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

The reality that a team that doesn't qualify for an event might find it difficult to attend an event, and the reality that admission to FRC events are free of charge are not mutually exclusive.

FIRST is not preventing 2869 from attending the event, but they are going to make the chance of the 27th best team in Chesapeake more difficult than the 41st team in the PNW, even though CHS is 85% the roster count as PNW.

I've accepted that someone has poured water all over my cereal, but they didn't have to pee in it too.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

The decision to calculate the percentage based on teams only in the geographic region of your Champ definitely helps MI logistics-wise.

Without the change, MI would send about 411/3130*804 = 105 teams to NorthCMP, or more teams than at MSC the last couple years. With that change and the 10% one, it's only 79 teams qualifying, so MSC is not irrelevant in qualifying to NorthCMP.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Well, speaking from experience... when a team is having a bad year, it might turn down a waitlist spot. On the other hand, when a team is doing well and just misses making it to champs, they're much more willing to accept such a spot.

And then you can consider which teams would apply for waitlist spots. While there are certainly exceptions, it's going to be the better funded teams, as attending champs is a rather expensive proposition. And it'll probably be the more confident teams, those that are confident they can build a decent robot and do well enough at champs to make a trip worthwhile (even if they are realists and realize the schedule or luck in playoffs can work against them).

Now, think about all the regional teams you don't see at champs. Teams that were finalists (although there's less of that now with the wildcards), semifinalists, or quarterfinalists, all of which may be pretty decent - especially when you look at the different relative strengths of regionals. Just take a look at the 2014 Lake Superior regional playoffs for an example - every set except Semifinals 2 went to a third match, with so many close games that any alliance really could have won that event that year.

So while any team can get in off the waitlist, there are enough good teams across FIRST, and enough psychology involved in spending that type of money, to suggest that we'll get some better teams than you might expect from it.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Note just because a team accepted a waitlist position does not mean that they had less points than the teams that qualified on points. Two seasons ago there was a team in the PNW that received and accepted a wait list spot on the first day of DCMP. By the end of DCMP they did earn enough points to qualify but since they already had a spot their points spot was passed on to the next team.

The district points system is not designed to send the top performing robots to CMP, it is designed to send the teams that earn the most points. Yes robot performance is where the bulk of the points are earned but awards earn points and there are bonuses for rookie and 2nd year teams. At the cutoff point the range of points is often quite small and winning just one award can make a difference of earning a CMP spot or not.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

While this is technically true (it happened to 303, 3637, and 5404 in MAR this year), I think that for the purposes of analyzing this proposal, Antonio's assumption should be used.
Say team A is above the points cutoff and team B is directly below it. If team A receives a waitlist spot, team B qualifies for Champs. While team A technically received a waitlist spot and team B earned a spot on district points, team B only earned their spot because team A received a waitlist spot. In this regard, I think it makes more sense to categorize team B as the waitlist team than team A because team B would not have earned a spot if it weren't for the waitlist.

My hypothesis is that districts are much better than regionals at qualifying competitive teams for Champs. I think the waitlist picks up the slack with qualifying good regional teams who missed champs because they were not on the right alliance to win/make finals and didn't win a culture award. Many of these teams, if they were in a district, could have easily qualified for champs.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

While certainly team B would not have made it if team A had not made the space available be getting a wait list spot, in the official record Team A will be shown as attending due to a wait list spot and Team B earning their spot on district points.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

In what official record? I have no knowledge of any public record of this.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I am also not aware of any official record of how teams qualified.

Here is my recreation of how teams qualified. Note that it incorrectly includes DCMP winners as "District Points" spots.

Distinguishing waitlist teams from district points teams was tough. If a district got X points spots, then I took the top X teams from that district who did not already qualify. The rest were included as waitlist teams. There was usually a pretty clear cut off point.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

What is the predicted spots allocated for 2017 based off in the 2016 season? Because you have PNW going from 30 to 41 and then there is Indiana going from 9 to 10. Indiana has an 11% increase where PNW has about a 37% increase.

Are these increases based off of a projection of how many rookie teams will be added to the 2017 season? IN gained 0 teams last year total so is FIRST assuming IN will gain 0 teams again this year? I'm just curious how these were designated. Thanks :D

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

from the blog "if 2017 were to look like 2016 with respect to team counts"

So it's using the exact same numbers as 2016, assuming no increase anywhere.

The difference you note is the difference between norths champs and south champs. districts going to south champs are going to get bigger increases than districts going to north champs.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Looks like a good time to move to North Carolina.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

It's hard to tell if this is sarcasm, but I don't think Sperkowski is even a Millennial. I am, and I'm at least 10 years older than he is.
Anyway, if you think the CMP has the same purpose as a little league championship, you may want to read up a bit on what FIRST's goals are. However much you might want it to be about earning your way, FIRST doesn't want that.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

So because we have so many more district teams in HalfChampsN compared to HalfChampsS, it causes less "new spots" to be distributed to each of the HalfChampsN districts?

Full Sarcasm Alert!: Can FIRST do us all a favor and send 3/4 of MI to half champs south? 201-60 = 141 and 88+60= 148. That'd make for a much better district distribution and would cause the same percentage increase of HalfChamps spots allocated to each district :D

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I was curious about this.

Using 2016 numbers and accounting for 3114 of 3130 teams (there are 16 hiding somewhere):

North: 1766 teams
South: 1348 teams

That's including the US, Canada, Israel, China, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and a few other smaller countries.

The blog post mentions
So there's your answer.


I wonder how much FIRST looked at team counts before drawing the lines? Or if it was more based on population? Really populous states like Texas, California, and Florida are all in the south, but they're currently lagging behind many northern and eastern states in teams/person.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Did the same for district points vs. waitlist. It'd be great if there were an official source for that information.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

What is FIRST's stated purpose of the CMP(s)?

If FIRST "doesn't want [it to be about earning your way], how come over 75% of teams will earn there way to a CMP in 2017?

FIRST said somewhere that they want every FRC team to have the opportunity to attend CMP once every four years. What does that matter if CMP is too expensive for lower resource teams to attend? Will FIRST reduce the registration cost ever?

What are the reasons for FRC wait list spots, but no other FIRST or VEX program to my knowledge intentionally preserves this percentage of wait list spots for their culminating events?

Things to think about. I think there are plenty of ways to skin a cat, with or without tons of wait list spots at CMP.

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I recommend you sit down and do the math yourself for a few of the districts. For 2016, the simple equation was (<# teams in district>/<# total teams in first>) * 600. For 2017, it's (<# teams in district>/<#teams in region>) * 402 * .9. You can find some of these numbers to help you fill things in have been previously compiled on CD, if you do some searching.

Note that these equations have absolutely nothing to do with the number of district teams in each region, but rather the number of total teams in each region.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I've heard rumors that FTC will be expanding slots (since now there's 2 half-champs) but rather than increase the number of teams qualifying into/out of the super-regionals, they will do a waitlist. Just a rumor though...

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I can't tell if this is a joke, but "back in the day" you could simple just buy your way into CMP. Waitlist wasn't even a thing until like the 2000s.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I think there is, is this what you're talking about?

http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/2016/NE/125

http://frc-districtrankings.usfirst.org/2016/FIM/2405

(examples) At the bottom of the page, in the red "corrections" box?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

That's actually my point. Indiana had 49 teams in 2016 where NC had 52 teams. Now that means in 2017 14/52 = 26.9% of teams from NC go to worlds where 10/49 = 20.4% of teams in IN get to go to worlds. All I'm saying is it's not the same % of each area going to worlds. I thought that was one of FIRST's points when they allocated spots to worlds.

Chesapeake 26/132 = 19.7%
Indiana = 10/49 = 20.4%
MI = 79/411 = 19.2%
MAR = 24/121 = 19.8%
NC = 14/52 = 26.9%
NE = 35/181 = 19.3%
PNW = 41/158 = 25.9%
PeachTree = 17/65 = 26.2%

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Yes, but contrary to what you said earlier, that difference is NOT due to the number of districts or district teams feeding into each champs. It's due to a combination of the total number of teams in each region (North has about 200 teams more than South) and probably due to the number of available spots in each region - that number is not going to be the same for both champs, as the number of pre-qualified teams for both are different.

My point is, dig into why the numbers are the way they are, don't just make assumptions about the source of the difference. When you dig into the true root cause of the difference, then you can start looking at useful suggestions for improvements.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

If you look at the 2017 vs 2018 distribution, it looks like the distributions are not quite as drastic long term.

Using 2016 numbers, there were 22 Kansas teams and 73 Missouri teams, which are part of the North Champs in 2017, but will be part of the South Champs in 2018.

Those 95 teams skew the balance. In 2018 the distribution, using Ernst's numbers would be:

North: 1671
South: 1443

I wonder if we can move another logical grouping of 114 teams to balance out the numbers!

P.S. This assumes that team growth is uniform throughout all of FIRSTdom, which Michigan has been ruining for a while now.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I didn't notice that before, neat find! It should help to sort out the points and waitlist teams (I already noticed a mistake caused by a typo in my first sheet).

Unfortunately it's not comprehensive. Teams like 834 don't have that mark when they did qualify by the waitlist.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Could it also be your team has turned down a waitlist spot?
I know some teams where every other year they got to champs on waitlist, and last year they even declined the spot because they said it wasn't worth it to waste all that money when they didn't preform well.
While everyone does deserve to go not everyone could afford it. There's a team the competes in upstate NY that can barely afford 1 regional and a robot.
They decline their championship spot every time, even with a successful season. Maybe with the Detroit championship it could become a little easier for them to attend. But it always comes down to cost and if the sponsors or school district could offer help or not.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

What FIRST wants and how FIRST executes plans to satisfy those wants are different discussions. I think it is safe to say that part of FIRST's purpose for CMP is to allow teams to participate regardless of "ability":
I don't think it's a leap to say that FIRST uses waitlist spots, in part, to help make this happen.

While I don't always agree with FIRST's methods, I don't think that FarmerJohn relating the CMP to a little league championship was as accurate as it could have been because of FIRST's position on CMP. And I think going after Sperkowski for looking forward to taking advantage of one of FIRST's mechanisms for attending was a little much. FarmerJohn's expectations about what CMP is don't seem to align with the expectations that FIRST is trying to set.

If people want FIRST to change what CMP is then that is a different discussion than what I was getting at. A good discussion that I think should continue to happen, but not what I was getting at.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Are you sure that 834 was a waitlist team rather than points? I know that after declines 5624 made it on points (confirmed by their mentor, despite not being listed as such on the leaderboard) and 1989 was qualified at the same time, and 834 qualified shortly after 1989 dropped.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Last year was the first year we actually attempted to be on the waitlist. In the years past we did not have the needed money to do so. Now we do. Honestly the best thing I think could happen to the waitlist in order to achieve every team at Champs every 4 years is to get rid of the lottery and just go by tokens. I know some people may hate this but I think it aligns with first hq's goals the best.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

If 5624 made it on points there should be a red "DI" on this page. Since there isn't, I assume they hadn't received an invitation. 1989 also does not have a red "DI". If we can't trust that page then we're in real trouble.

Assuming that page correctly shows invitations, here is how I have MAR teams qualifying. These should be the 22 teams that FIRST allocated to MAR. Note that 193 is the last points team in this list and the link shows them as the last team to get an invitation. The teams after 193 that are shown as qualified either have the note saying that they are waitlist teams or have qualified with an award.



Why does FIRST value the opportunity for non-qualified district teams to attend FIRST Championship, even more than the opportunity for some qualified teams?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Which brings up an interesting question. What will FIRST do if the existing team imbalance between North and South increases? When do we rebalance?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Just curious, how many teams are let in off the waitlist every year?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

IMO, FIRST is trying to give all teams the opportunity to attend Champs, but it's not their responsibility to pay for it. FIRST has extended a hand to those teams to give them the chance, as long as they can afford it, which I think is fair. That also might explain why the Champs lotto tickets stack up; lower resource teams that can't afford it one year will be more likely to be able to go in the future when they can afford it. And frankly, if a team can't afford to go to Champs many years in a row, I think Vex or FTC might be a better fit anyway.
I don't have the facts about how often Vex and FTC teams cannot afford the cost of attending their championship events in addition to building the bot, but I would wager it's a lot lower.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Well, 834 was 30th in MAR District points.
MORT, 5404, 1923, and 3637 were between 1989 and 834.

MORT had a Chairman's win bid to champs.
5404 got in via waitlist. (If I recall correctly.)
1923 qualified via MAR Champs Chairman's

Did 3637 get a waitlist spot or something?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Are you asking if I know FIRST's motivations about this? I don't. Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but it sounds like you are asking me to justify FIRST's decisions without even knowing if I agree with them :D

If I had to guess at their motivation I would say that it is because they want a broad variety of people to attend CMP. FIRST's first Strategic Pillar is:
So they prohibit some teams who would otherwise qualify, and they allow a rotation of teams who would not otherwise qualify. Again, this is just guesswork, but I am confident in the basics.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I didn't mean to put you on the spot or single you out specifically, I just don't understand the motivation for this decision and was wondering if somebody had a better idea.

I suppose using the lottery to send perennially bad teams makes some amount of sense.

It's odd that FIRST is pushing for areas to go to the district model so much when districts have the exact opposite philosophy on team advancement. There are no waitlist spots at District Championships.

This shows 3637 getting a wait list spot.

I'm pretty sure there were 59 waitlist teams last year, although that number is going to be a lot higher this year.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

What you call a "bad" team, FIRST might call a "competitively underperforming" team. It's possible to have a powerful impact on your team / community without performing well on the field. Maybe FIRST doesn't have a good method other than EI and CA (only awarded to two teams per Regional) to find them, so they hope that the waitlist will help them attend CMP?

The waitlist is still applied to District teams though, so I don't see a big difference. And actually all District Event Chairman's teams get to attend DCMPs so you can end up with more potentially "competitively underperforming" teams. I see your point that Districts reward competitive play with the promise of advancement though. Maybe FIRST hopes that the waitlist will still pick up those teams who weren't competitive enough to advance to DCMP as well.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Districts reward performance on and off the field; culture awards get points too. I like that culture award winning teams advance because they have shown off the field success. I also have no problem with using waitlist teams to bring an event to capacity when qualified teams can't be found. If the issue is that districts don't reward off the field performance enough, then the solution is to increase those point values or give EI teams qualification to the District Championship.

Randomly picking teams weighted by how long ago they went to the Championship does not reward off the field performance. In fact, now a team who may have qualified with points partially earned by a district chairman's award could be denied advancement in order to let in a team that got lucky.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I have a story on this: Once upon a time, a team from Northern California was a "bad team". They built pretty bad robots that didn't work very well. Sometimes they didn't even move. They only had funds to attend one regional per year, and they often didn't get picked for eliminations. Then one of the senior team leaders decided that he wanted his team to be able to go to the Championship, so they worked really hard, raised the money and pre-registered (because you could do this back then) for the Championship. The team went, the robot didn't work (they won 1 match and placed 82nd out of 83 teams in the division). But the team had a great time, and met some really great and inspirational teams and came back with a new inspiration to do better and get more sponsors, which they did.

That team was 971 in 2006. The senior leader was me. While it's not the only reason 971 is a powerhouse now, it was a big part of that team's transformation. I have, and always will, advocate for the opportunity for "bad"/"undeserving"/"unqualified" teams to attend a Championship, because it can be very inspirational.

It's not currently in the district system to have waitlist teams at DCMP, but it could be. The difference is that districts are by definition geographically oriented. Those teams will already have played with most of the teams at their District Championship. It's not the same opportunity to meet and interact with the larger FIRST community.

I do not believe that split-champs is the right way to go. I also don't believe that it necessarily helps get more teams "the Championship experience". But I do believe there is value in allowing some number of teams who likely would never qualify for a higher level of competition to go experience an event like that.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Yeah, that's the prohibiting potentially qualified teams to allow a broader attendance. I assume you would prefer only those teams who can qualify on or off the field to be able to attend?

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I think you and Evan Morrison made some pretty good arguments about the benefits of having non-qualified teams at the championships. I'm not sure if I totally agree that those benefits outweigh the benefits of sending more of those on-the-edge qualifying teams, but I'm definitely more understanding of this change than before.

The point of my last post was to clarify that opposition to this change never came from a viewpoint that on the field success was all that mattered.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Thanks for sharing, I find that to be quite inspiring.

Coming from a rookie team that attended Champs last year, I feel that it had a huge impact on our students. Just being there and playing matches, even if we didn't do great, really showed everyone what it's like to be in the "big leagues" so to speak. And because of that experience, we're going to work as hard as we possibly can to be back.

As I've said in prior posts, I believe students that get to experience events like the Championship and even play at several events each season are more inspired and excited about STEM than students who don't have those opportunities. Thus, at some point you have to decide what FIRST and the Championship is about. For some it might be winning, but for me - it's inspiration.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

I like this a lot and think first hq would too. However, with south Champs and the gigantic number of waitlist spots it may actually be a problem filling them if only teams who haven't been to Champs in a cycle are eligible. For North Champs on the other hand I think this could work.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

Don Bossi, president of First, disagrees with you somewhat. His comments here.

Re: [FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts
 

This would be a good change, eventually, but I think at this point, we actually do get pretty far down the Championship waitlist by the time St. Louis / Houston rolls around (even if many of those invites are too late for teams to accept them). Particularly with the extra spots.

There's also some value in extending waitlist spots to teams who will probably eventually qualify - those teams get to start planning sooner, and the spot isn't wasted when a different team gets their waitlist spot later.