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Why Losers Lose?
I've been following this thread and the question keeps nagging at me, why isn't there a sister thread called, Why Losers Lose? So here it is. Why do losers lose?
You are free to answer in any fashion you please as long it you keep it clean and respectful. My thinking is that we will see some interesting responses that will help broaden and deepen the discussion of winners and losers. Jane |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Because they are inefficient in their use of their allotted time.
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Inexperience, especially in a competition like FIRST. As a 4th year team this year we have learned more and more each year about things other teams do that we had never thought of before.
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Well, in many cases the odds are against them... only 3/40+ teams can win an event.
But it all seriousness I think that a lot of team don't take advantage of what they have available to them or do the proper research before building a robot. Chiefdelphi is a wealth of knowledge as well as other teams websites, the "Behind the Design" books. Losing can also be caused by: - A lack of a defined goal - A lack of understanding of the teams abilities* - A lack of strategy - A lack of luck *likely one of the largest factors of all |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Biting off more than they can chew, focusing too much on superficial items and not the task at hand, not realizing what they can and cannot do or worse ignoring what is reasonable for them.
It is really sad seeing teams year after year with a non functioning robot/we tried to everything but can't do anything well. Have they not learned their lesson? What is even sadder is these are the same teams who complain about certain teams winning year after year. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
There are hundreds, if not thousands of reasons losers lose. Some of the most common seem to be:
-Bad Robot Design or implementation -Lack of understanding of basic game strategy -Under or unpreparedness -Bad Luck -Severe Mechanical Issues -Lack of Programming -Bad or Under performing Drivers -Strategy Errors -Lack of the Drive to Win -Working beyond their means Interestingly enough, some teams lose but did nothing wrong. Remember, only 3 (sometimes 4) teams 'win' an event. |
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One thing I haven't seen mentioned so far... Because the "Super Alliance" is so darned hard to beat! You don't get very far at competition if you're robot doesn't work... but by the time you get to the eliminations, it's not about how each individual robot performs - it's about how the alliance works together to achieve the task. Go in with a strong strategy, be flexible, and ensure that every robot provides a serious contribution, and you have a chance of winning. If you go in and just play like 3 robots on the field, you'll eventually be beat (with a few notable super alliance exceptions).
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Not learning from their failures.
If everyone learned from their past mistakes, as a team gets older, they should get more and more successful. As we all know that is not the case. There are outside circumstances that come into play like team turnover and graduating students, but the point remains the same. Every team should take note of a failure and learn from it. Create a best practices document and keep track of what works and what doesn't. Something simple as that could create an extremely strong team. -Brando |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
lack of driver practice. in our reigional there was a robot that could only hang on the middle and lower pegs, and was all KOP. they were awesome. the beat many teams for one reason, the kids had obviously had a TON of time driving it.
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Prioritizing.
For example, last year we spent all build season trying to build a climber that ended up not working, and the end game was worth almost nothing. This year, the minibot was something we threw together in the last few days, even though it is what wins matches at this point. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
los·er
1. A person or thing that loses or has lost something, esp. a game or contest. 2. A person who accepts defeat with good or bad grace, as specified: "they should concede that and be good losers" Losers lose because they don't win. Not necessarily because the team has a poor robot, but because only 3/60+ teams can win a competition. It takes blood, sweat, tears and determination to be one of those three. That being said, there is a lot of luck (good and bad) that befalls the winning and losing teams. Additionally, there's some secretive alliance selection and backstabbing going on at every regional. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of luck (in qualification alliances, points and penalties) to be a 'power team' at a competition. It takes even more luck to stay that way. Often times, there are 20 other teams that could have taken first from your team. Thousands of other students have just as much knowledge, drive and initiative as you. They are not losers. Even if they never see a win for their FIRST team, they too are winners. and they don't need a gold medal to prove that. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
i think it is necessary to qualify what this thread means by "losing"
It seems that most of this thread and its sister thread "why winners win"... is discussing winning and losing from an on field perspective. If this is what the creator of the thread intended...so be it. I know that our team doesn't look at winning this way... or losing. In both of our best years 2010 and 2011 our team did not win a regional but those were what I considered to be winning years... Winning on the field is necessarily limited to a single three team (or sometimes 4 team) alliance for each event. It always comes down to how well the teams play together. Great robots can be beaten by good teamwork. I would like to think that most if not all of the teams in FIRST are not losers... If we decide that we can only have three winners at an event... we are really limiting ourselves... just a thought.... |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
My personal favorite.
You make a custom drivetrain that performs worse than and/or is less reliable than the kop drivetrain. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
One thing that carries over directly from the sports model - once a team gets behind, they get discouraged and it all keeps going downhill from there. It may be unconscious, but they stop trying, or at least don't try as hard.
As a corollary, sometimes when the situation looks incredibly bleak the team figures there's nothing more to lose anyway, so they take some chances that they wouldn't usually take. Sometimes those chances work out for them, but more often the risky behavior results in the diminished returns that most would expect. An example in this year's game might be deciding to try for one last logo before going for the minibot race. The likely result is to miss hanging the tube and not get the minibot to deploy, but in a few cases they might just pull it off. |
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Most teams don't make eliminations because they simply don't put enough time or take it as seriously as most of us on CD do. There is a very good percentage of teams who just view FIRST has an after school activity and spend a couple of hours a couple of days per week during buildseason. Compared to the effort the 111s, 1114s, 254s put in to being competitive, its unbelieveable how little effort a good chunk of teams put in.
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Time.
Resources, funding, mentorship, partnerships, collaboration, etc. etc. are the main differences between teams that win and teams that lose. Not only from a competition standpoint, but overall learning objectives/experiences. Teams in general are always working towards a better ____ on the above list, which in turn alleviates time. Being inefficient with your time is a relative term dependent on how much _________ you have. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
I think what Tolstoy said about happy families can be applied here: winners are all alike, every loser loses it its own way.
:) -George |
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Our downfall was:
Lack of practice Lack of organization Lack of efficiency |
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Another one is strategy, which is absolutely crucial in eliminations. It's part of the reason we lost semis in NY, since the other team had put a starvation strategy into effect (this coupled with our alliance captain losing comms). |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
You obviously don't get it. There are no losers in FIRST! I say that anyone who builds a robot out of a kit of parts, in just 6 weeks, to solve a complicated task is definitely a winner!
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
A few things are:
-incorrect prioritizing -not reading the rules -not thoroughly testing your robot -small build time screwup This list is coming from what happened with our team this year. When we planned our robot, we didn't prioritize picking up game pieces off the ground at all, resulting in us getting very few (no) points on the board. In addition, we didn't read the rules all the way and had to re-design our robot three times during build. Lastly, since we didn't test our robot during the season (practices were at quarter speed) we missed key driving issues such as our drive train overheating and binding. (After competition we found out that someone forgot to grease our gearbox which caused a lot of the issue, hence, small build time screw-ups:) ). |
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I say continuity and student determination.
Continuity because it helps to have veteran students/mentors that have been around the FIRST block. These veterans have seen a wide array of problems solved with an even wider array of solutions. Student determination because no matter how veteran the mentor is, at the end of the day the students are going to run the team. I've seen extremely determined students drive entire teams to victory, and a lack of these students drive even more teams to failure. - Sunny G. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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Every year, I find that no student can fabricate a(n) _____ as fast as I can. This coming year (2012) MY personal focus will be on getting our returning students (who are more awesome than usual) to become as fast as I am. Quote:
One of my pet peeves is when someone makes a speech at an FRC competition and states "You are all winners". Wrong. Just as in life, we are NOT all winners, or we wouldn't bother competing. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Lack of understanding the rules. not sweating the details and general lack of preparation are their undoing more often than not.
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
I wanted to add:
Its what you do during the off-season which is most effective in reducing your chances at "losing." Start fundraising early, start training kids early, start planning out your year now. A few examples of what we are doing now, to help alleviate the challenge of the 6 week build season. Prototyping a new elevator lift system, continue work on a prototype swerve drive base, fixing up our current crate for next season including IRI next month, fundraising like crazy (personally writing for 3 grants now), building VEX robots for an August 21st competition, ordered $$$$ of supplies in the area of wires/electronics, pnuematics, aluminum stock, lego pieces, VEX piecies, scheduling of outreach events for Fall 2011, reserving space for team bonding camp in October, conducting visitations of our program for STEM-related interest groups, working on procurement docs for current and ongoing renovations to robotics areas, etc. Working on the 2012 HI FRC regional tournament with discussions on the friday team social (tentative agenda/plans are set), recruitment of mainland teams to HI (subsidized team packages), and recruitment of new HI rookie teams (should be about 40 HI teams next year). I listed a whole bunch off the top of my head to show how "urgent" things are right now in preparing for the 2012 season.:ahh: |
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Lack of a standard of excellence within the season, in these areas:
- preparation before the season starts - quality of the work during the season - adherence to a set schedule at all points - drive practice intensity at the end of build season & during competition season (if applicable) - keeping team values intact throughout everything - helping to build up leadership values in younger team members - adherence to FIRST values in GP & general decency within the regionals & CMP |
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
As opposed to answering the poorly formed literal question posed in the thread title, I'll go with a more generic "Why do teams fail to succeed". For the purposes of this exercise, let's define success as "producing a robot with competes at a below average to average level". Many teams have higher goals, while some teams have completely different goals, but this is a good basis to form a question of success around.
This is just snapshot of some of the more common reasons, many of which have been touched upon already in this thread. - Building before strategically designing and analyzing the game: "How can you build a robot if you don't know what it's supposed to do" - A failure to honestly and realistically evaluate one's resources (resources in this context are defined as time, experience, fabrication abilities and money), thus making you think you're capable of doing more than you can do. - A failure to properly design around one's resources - Over complicated robots: "The jack of all trades is the master of none" - Lack of effort/desire/focus - Lack of practice - A failure to strategize |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Giving up. Quitting. Placing blame rather than finding solutions.
FIRST is about problem-solving. Problem-solving requires persistence and an open mind. If you lack those traits, losing comes easy. |
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I think another aspect is the attitude and perspective. I would personally call this season a failure for me, but others on the team think that it was a tremendous success. Now, we both had the same season, but yet, how can we have such polar opinions? It is a matter of perspective. I have failed on a personal level. I saw this season as a failure because of several reasons.
First, we relied too much on luck. Luck got a fairly far, in fact, the farthest we have gotten in 11 years. But that is why I consider this season a failure. Disregard all numbers and ranking. I, personally, did not do all I can do to insure a better robot. I did not acquire the trust from the mentors to allow me to implement any autonomy into the robot. In fact, I had only uploaded code only once during the competition. Mentors did not trust code. I call that a failure because I failed to gain their trust. Another reason was due to the more obvious. I had failed to control the arm efficiently enough. My personal record was 2 tubes during any given match. I considered that a failure. I promised a logo, but due to technical difficulties, the arm was not given the limelight. Perhaps it was not all in my control, but I bare the blunt of the blame. Lastly, one of the biggest reasons were "diplomatic" reasons. Perhaps, I have made a few enemies in the team. I am very outspoken and opinionated. Which in itself is great in my honest opinion, but the flaw was in the execution of those opinions. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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:) Jane |
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Just goes to show how important the "off" season is. |
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The robot is actually a potted plant.
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
Our team frequently discusses the failure that we had as rookies in 1995 that lead to a judges award called "Best Execution of an Alternative (Losing) Strategy". This was given to us because we created an overly complicated catapult to launch the ball through the uprights that formed the goal, the crowd cheered every time they saw us score and people loved the design. The problem was is was not a fast or effective way to score. The best way to score that year was to quickly swing the ball back and forth through the uprights. We had that idea but got so wrapped around the axel thinking that method was easy to defend that we spent all build making an undefendable scorer that took half the match to reset.
Focusing on the wrong part of the game will get you every time. As Karthik said above you have to know how to play the game before you design so that you know what to build and where to focus your effort. |
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Why do some teams loose to this degree? I have some pretty strong views on this issue Internal Culture: Teams don't achieve because they don't demand it. They don't build the mentality that powerhouse teams have: that to get something, you have to work hard for it. Want to know the rules? You've got to study them. Want a flawless grabber? You've got to put in the hours to prototype it. Want a fantastic sponsor? Hunt them down. If a team doesn't teach these ideas to their students, they tend to get lazy. I think that this one, more than anything else, is the root of the issue. Everything else just feeds into it. Denial: I think this is the root cause of some of the "Student built vs. Mentor Built" flames. If a team creates a robot that is not as effective as one of the powerhouses, it is easy to marginalize the achievement of the powerhouse, by suggesting that they didn't follow the spirit of the program. It's hard to put in the hard work required to reach the level of the powerhouses. And a team that's cut corners through the build process is likely to cut corners here as well. If this happens, however, these teams begin to feel that they're the best thing in the world, and have no reason to improve. Giving up: There's a view out there that powerhouses have everything come easily to them: that their sponsors walked up to them and handed out money, that their robots work on the first try, and that they win events without really trying. When these things don't happen to a team, they get distressed. If they have a hard time securing work space or funding, they panic, rather than work for it. And as far as robots go, many teams schedule their builds assuming everything will go perfectly, and when it doesn't, they fail. And many other issues mentioned in this thread. But these ones are the biggest that I've seen firsthand. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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The only part your team CAD'ed and machined on your robot is your wheels. I've lost track of all the robots I've seen over the years that have CNC-machined wheels from billet aluminum stock but then have a superstructure and manipulator that's either non-existent or cannot score. |
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On a related thought, I wonder what the maximum sustainable number of "winning" FRC teams is. It is one thing to support an FRC team, we've seen that 2,000 or so and growing can be adequately supported simultaneously. It is quite another thing to sustain an FRC team competing/designing at the level of say Team IFI. In a town with one machine shop, they can't have an 8 hour turnaround for everyone... Even if a team isn't top tier, I think there's a big difference in resources consumed for a basic rookie team with little engineering support and a consistent top 8 team. It's a much larger drain, and I wonder if that tipping point (the community can't support all of their teams at the level they could otherwise compete at) has been reached in some areas with a high density of teams. |
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Lots of people asked why we used wood this year and I expect they were looking for some elaborate technical answer but the bottom line was it was a quick available and free resource. |
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Poor build quality/tolerances
This nearly crushed us this year. Nearly every problem this year was caused by this. We had all these unexpected part deflections and part interferences. It severely delayed our build schedule because we had to fix so many parts. During competition, we were constantly mending our robot trying to be proactive on repairs. It can be extremely draining. This made it a "lost" by our count because a critical design quality we seek is durability. I find years that we meet the design objective that my students found the year much more enjoyable and rewarding because they have time to learn other things instead of constantly relearning the same failure over and over again. On the other hand, Its nice to know that this was the root cause 90 percent of our issues this year instead of having a huge collection of problems. This aligns with building within your means. I failed to realize the demographics have been changing in our team over the years. We simply no longer have enough students willing to take woodshop or a JC machine shop class. I didn't realize designs that worked one year won't necessarily work again again because the students are different. I realize I have to recognize our build means year to year better or implement training procedures to standardize our build means. More on the definition of losing. I was kind of shocked by our OPR rank. I thought we should have been ranked much lower. This subject has been touched on before but it seems that a large pool of teams simply can't play a single aspect of the game. Its heartbreaking to see these statistics, and more so considering how close our team felt we would be if we fell behind on our repairs and missed a match or two. I guess I would say we were not winning but we were not losing either. Perhaps as a community we are losing with so many teams not able to play the game at all. |
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:) Jane |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Here are things my team doesn't usually do that put us behind the powerhouse teams:
- Learn and use CAD - Strategize - Scout effectively - Learn--from early regionals, from ChiefDelphi, and from local teams. Teams that were unaware of the "Minibot Ramp" trend missed out. - Take on more than you can handle in 6 weeks - Play in at least 3 events - Practice: The year my team did best recently was Lunacy--we built a simple robot with a simple dumper, simple drivetrain--in 5 weeks. That week of practice makes a difference. Not every team has the same culture of winning, the same number of mentor hours, and the same number of student hours. However, doing just some of the things above really helps. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
I think that any team can play the game provided a working drive train. A box on wheels can be a valuable alliance partner at the regional level if its team has the right strategy and a driver who practiced--and if your robot is a box on wheels, your driver is probably pretty practiced.
Of course, I have seen teams without working drive trains... but those are rather rare. I wouldn't say there are a large number of teams who can't play the game... the vast majority can't play the game well, but that's another story. |
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Some people have kind of already covered this (by mentioning the "quality of the work during the season," for example):
Most people have been talking about the less obvious reasons why teams fail, such as poor time management and poor strategy. There is one obvious reason why teams lose that few people have mentioned (although I don't think many people overlooked it - maybe it just seemed too obvious to say) and that is a lack of technical expertise, money, mentors and other "resources." Quote:
If not winning is considered losing, then having a good strategy, making good decisions and realistically estimating one's resources are not enough to avoid losing. You actually have to have the resources (most of the time). This is nothing groundbreaking, but no one so far has given reasons why helping teams improve their decision-making, strategy, etc. is more effective than helping them get more resources or advising them on how to do so. ...so I guess I'm actually asking a question - is it better to help teams get resources, or to help them improve in other ways? I honestly don't know. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Experience.
If you lack design experience, there is less chance of success. |
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I think the ultimate "loss" is a team ceasing to exist after their first year or two because their initial funding runs out, and they've done nothing (and/or no one has taken the time to show them how) to become self-sustainable over that time period. In a majority of cases, a young team failing miserably on the field is a big giant warning sign that they could be headed for the ultimate loss: self-termination. Very few young teams "get it" in all other aspects of FIRST outside the robot without at least being able to field a somewhat-capable machine. I met a bunch of rookie teams in TN filled with very nice people; however, in the cases of the teams with the worst robots, there were at most two adults leading them, and it was obvious those adults were in over their heads, nor had they had the benefit of any veteran team guidance prior to their arrival at the competition. These teams are always appreciative of veterans at the events who help them get out on the field and compete, but I can't help but think that if the veteran teams in their own region would have spent just a bit more time with them during their first year, their experience would have been MUCH more productive, fun, and inspiring. We need more regional collaboration among teams, and anything FIRST and veteran teams can do to facilitate such collaboration would be monumentally helpful. In other cases, you see veteran teams that have a long history of competitive failure and uninspiring robots. These are teams who continue to get funding somehow but who lack the leadership needed to grow their resources and use that funding efficiently. These are the teams who frustrate you to no end, because they are often led by stubborn types who refuse to admit they need any help, even if you offer it to them. You grit your teeth at the vast amount of money being wasted on such forcibly inefficient enterprises, and you feel bad for the kids trapped within such programs. The only solution here is to keep smacking their team leaders upside the head with common sense until they relent and accept your input. So yes, it is MUCH better to show teams the best methods of obtaining more resources, to continue applying positive, constant pressure on them by periodically checking on their progress, and to show them how to better use the resources they already have at their disposal. Once we understand WHY "losers lose", instead of continuing to marvel at them like they are some freak show exhibit, we must then ask ourselves, "OK - so what are we going to DO to help them become winners?" I think a concerted effort by FIRST and its experienced teams to pay more attention to young and at-risk teams, not only during the offseason, but dare I suggest, during the build season, would help alleviate many problems, providing reassurance and confidence to new mentors that they have their teams heading in the right direction. It doesn't take much. A whole other can of worms involves hooking up veteran teams with potential rookie teams to help them determine if they should even start an FRC team in the first place. If we're asking teams to fully understand what they are capable of given their existing level of resources, then I imagine the answer they'd arrive at in many cases would be to start slow and form an FTC or VRC team instead. |
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Resources are not always tangible. Things like experience, integrity, honesty, and work ethic are resources as well. So the answer to your question is "Yes". |
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There have been a lot of excellent posts on this site. And this may be more emphasis than addition but here goes:
Mentors need to be sure that the team is on track to have a working robot ready. Students can do almost everything, but they need help watching the calender. Even if your ideas turn out bad, if your robot is inspectable and running when you arrive at your first event, anything can happen. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
This year my team focused realy hard on design and effectivness. But in the two regionals we competed in this yearwe didn't even make finals. The reasons:
1. Loss of robot comunication.(whether it be the controboard, robot, or field at fault) 2. Making that last second discision to hang another tube with only 15sec(or less) to go. 3. Something on the robot breaks.(arm, manipulater, minibot,etc.) 4. Team isn't being consistant.(scoring lots of points only counts if you can do it again.) In san diego we went into quaters and won the 1st match 80-38. 2nd match we were hanging many tubes while our opponents only hung 1. During the endgame we hung a tube at 10sec and weren't able to align with the pole in time. Lost the match 50-53. 3rd match we lost communication after autonomous and completely blocked one of our own racks.This was caused by a malfunctioning usb port in the control board. Lost 29-71. Just painfull.:ahh: In L.A. we flew by quarters with scores of 129 & 128. In semi's however we lost the 1st match because of a communication problem, 28-60. The robot didn't even move in automous. The banebot 775's we were using shorted out and caused the robot to reboot(something that also caused 781 to be disabled in einstein finals. The next match the same thing happened but communication was restored half-way through the match. Our partners minibot wasn't working properly and didn't go up the pole, ours did but according to the judges it was to high, something that never happened before and never happened since. Lost 61-86. In champs qualifications we got rid of the com probs but ran into little probs that kept us down. |
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I'm happy, in the end, everything worked out so well for 973. How about a post from you in the "Why Winners Win?" thread. :D |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Generally, when all team members aren't on the same page and when the team doesn't realistically asses their resources and derive a plan from that assessment is when they set themselves up for failure.
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I believe losers lose because of unorganization and unprepared teamates
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Why do losers lose? Here's my tree of reasons:
1) Because they don't build a good robot 1.1) Because they didn't have time 1.1.1) Because they didn't have enough students 1.1.1.4) Because they didn't run active recruiting 1.1.1.5) Because they didn't keep the students interested year-round 1.1.1.5.1) Because there wasn't enough teacher/mentor availability year-round to run meetings? 1.1.1.5.2) Because there wasn't enough enthusiasm among the students to run meetings by themselves? 1.1.1.6) Because the students didn't have the skills they needed to be effective during build season 1.1.1.6.1) Because they didn't run year-round meeting? (see 1.1.1.5) 1.1.2) Because they didn't have enough mentors 1.1.2.1) Because of an anti-mentor bent among the team members? 1.1.2.2) Because of insufficient mentor recruiting? 1.1.2.2.1) Because of a lack of involvement in the community? 1.1.3) Because they didn't have the money to have things built professionally (see 1.2) 1.1.4) Because they bit off more than they could chew 1.1.4.1) Because they lacked experience (see 1.4) 1.2) Because they didn't have money 1.2.1) Because they didn't do enough community outreach? 1.2.2) Because they didn't do enough in-school fundraising? 1.2.2.1) Because of not enough teacher/mentor organizing involvement? 1.2.2.2) Because of not enough student enthusiasm? (see 1.1.1.5) 1.4) Because they lacked experience 1.4.1) Because they're a rookie team 1.4.2) Because they don't live and breath robots and robot designs 1.4.2.1) Because of a lack of enthusiasm? Interesting that for me, lots of things come down to "lack of enthusiasm", "lack of community outreach", and "lack of year-round program" |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Some reasons I've noticed my team fails at doing and therefor leading to the ultimate game losing is:
Focusing on designing the robot. We never design around the idea of points, we always design around the idea of doing everything in the field. For example, our minibot was a last minute add on we made. NOT EVEN TESTED! |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
I'd like to thank everyone who posted in this thread. Your perspectives have added insight and food for thought.
One area that I've been mulling over is the lack of check points along the way. There are check points for the build and there are plenty of discussions about teams falling behind schedule, waiting on parts, or procrastinating. I haven't really read many discussions in CD about check points for morale. If a team feels defeated or confused before the build starts or during the build, the team won't move into the competition season with much of a boost. There can be various reasons for feelings of defeat, even before the season starts. Maybe a team isn't going to the Championship Event and decides that it is pointless to give 150% each and every day. Maybe a team doesn't understand the process of designing the robot to be able to adjust to the continual development of game play. Maybe the team doesn't have a system in place to address the constant day-to-day frustrations and road blocks, helping it to overcome and problem-solve through those frustrations. Maybe a team's mentors try to take on too much and don't delegate properly. Maybe a team's student leads try to take on too much and don't delegate properly. I can see all sorts of reasons for feeling defeated and confused before, during, and after build. In the teams that consistently achieve success in whatever form that takes, there is a recognition and implementation of strong leadership. In my opinion, that doesn't mean a strong leader who does everything and controls everything. It means a strong leadership within the team using tools such as wisdom, experience, flexibility, and foresight to help bolster self-confidence and ease the sense of failure and/or desire to give up. Teenagers remind me of vessels that love to be filled. One way or the other, they will be filled and it is up to the mentors to help them gain a sense of responsibility, accountability, and ownership regarding the team and the team's goals. That fills the vessels plenty. At the same time, the mentors are also vessels and we, too, must take that responsibility. Making this a consistent part of the team philosophy and approach to competing will give the team an edge in the shop and on the field. The trick is in making it consistent. That's where I am in my thinking right now. I can't wait to see where my thinking is next year. It changes, develops, and grows every season. Again, thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread. Jane |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Students students students (and et cetera...)
Students are the people that make the team (heck it's the whole point of FIRST). Mentors and coaches are there to help guide the team and to show the students what enthusiasm, dedication, and passion is. If you have a divided team (upperclassmen vs. lowerclassmen) you are not going to do very well. During the time at Boilermaker regional, our lowerclassmen had been visiting the campus- and I do mean the whole time. I can understand why- they feel that they weren't able to do anything contributing while the upperclassmen did all the work. One of our freshman was very angry and upset that the team had made a makeshift minibot deployment that he had suggested waaay back then in week 3 of building season. Many times the lowerclassmen had suggested ideas, but at some point they started feeling ignored and insignificant. Student involvement has always been a problem for our team. We come from a school that is 2500~ish strong- yet we are able to hold on to about 5 new students for a year-round involvement, an some of these students are barely holding on to robotics. They enjoy the activity a lot, but their dedication is a bit lower than the team expects. This frustrates some of our other team members a bit because we know there are great students in the school that we could use, but they're just dispersed. Just out there, and half of them haven't heard about robotics. The team is working the recruitment now, point made short- students that dedicate to the team will always win. Teams with lackluster students won't get very far. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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As for the topic of the thread, I've found this really interesting, although a lot of the factors listed strike me as dependent variables, not independent. Like any business, the key to losing seems to be to have a poor plan or to fail in execution, or both. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
The loser does not lose because he finally wins an experience that ultimately will serve as another option, he loses who do not try it
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Re: Why Losers Lose?
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But the biggest thing is continual planning. The program will NOT go to plan. But its how you continue to plan is what separates you from the team that struggles. One of my favorite quotes is from Eisenhower: "Plans are nothing; planning is everything" |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
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I'll qualify the "measurable" above. While we didn't win awards or regionals we still inspired a lot of students along the way. We have all of our old robots dating back to 2003 and when a former student comes by for a visit the first thing they do is go and look for their old robot. I'm not sure "measureable" success has increased the percent of students going to engineering or other technical fields - they seem to have been inspired anyway. |
Re: Why Losers Lose?
Trying to build the coolest 'bot at the regional when you aren't yet good at the basics. You have to finish before you can win, would be the saying.
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