Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonmw04
We are not football, track, softball or any other organized sport. We are in the business of inspiring students. I think this system will limit the number of student we can inspire. I truly believe that EVERY team should have the opportunity to compete at champs at least once every 4 years. Yes, that means the level of competition will be lower. Yes, there might be brave little toasters at champs. That's how I think it should be.
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FIRST is certainly being forced into this very unenviable balancing act. It is trying to satisfy the following requirements:
- Support a competition structure for 2400+ FRC teams
- Hold an end-of season event where all divisions of competition compete simutaneously
- because of the last point, they must cap FRC slots at 400
- Have already promised dozens of those spots as pre-qualifiers from the previous end-of-season event
- Must fulfill six-seven merit spots per regional, with six new regionals this year on top of MAR/MSC slots
FIRST preaches sustainability, and for the foreseeable future, allowing all teams a crack at CMP is mathematically unsustainable.
I have elaborated earlier that ten years ago, most teams had to go to CMP to learn from strong veteran teams. Now there are well-established veteran teams in every state that currently supports FRC. If we were to shift to the district system and keep buy-in slots, that means the sport is restricting even more hardworking teams because while they were actually good enough, they were not elite or mediocre. The message you would be sending teams who are not on say, 254 or 148 or 1114's level but still put in a ton of hours to deliver a solid product is not a positive or effective one.
I think the idea of everyone getting to enter a robot of championships is nice, but it is not going to become any less impossible for the time being, nor will it ever be considered a fair method of slot distribution. I can see a shift from the current competition structure to one that supports districts, district/state/super regional championships, "last chance/destination" double field traditional regionals, and CMP.