[SamMullen]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

I agree that eliminating the championship eligblity of the EI award would focus more to the competition. I just wanted to address the hypothetical situation of a EI award winner with a sub-par robot. I think that there are better ideas than this one. The EI award does have many merits that warrants its celebration.

The rookie all-star on the other hand is a strictly on the field performance award. With it going to the highest ranked rookie, it takes no input of the teams off the field actions. There scenarios where I could see a really good rookie team should go to the championships, especially considering what happened in San Diego (really cool by the way). However, in the case where a rookie team merely seeds higher than the other rookies and seeds poorly relative to the rest of the field, I feel there are more deserving teams that should go to the championships.

Originally Posted by FIRST

Rookie All-Star Award
The 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.

The Rookie All-Star award is actually more like a Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration award than you described. From what I understand, it does not really have anything to do with robot performance.