Quote:
Originally Posted by fintelia
For a thread about not stereotyping elite teams, there is an awful lot of stereotyping of low performing teams...
Perhaps the most alarming (and absolutely false) allegation is that these teams do not put in as much hard work or thought as the elite teams do. It just simply not true. All teams work hard and employ the resources available to them, as they should.
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There is a huge difference between one team "working hard" and another. I don't think anyone is saying low performing teams don't work hard on their robots, that is just non-sense. Many times low performing teams work hard but they are working without well defined plans/expectations and towards a strategy that just isn't going to work. Or in many cases they work hard towards a strategy that is going to work but will perform at a level just below stellar/win every regional they attend. I firmly believe that a majority of FRC teams fall into this category and it is a dangerous rut that will take a lot of work to get out of. Its tough to lose when you have put so much time and effort into your robot that is very good but continually get eliminated in the quarter-finals/semi-finals or glanced over during alliance selections. Its often in these situations said teams looks at the elite/winning teams and start making allegations as to how they win and how they have their resources.
Every team faces unique challenges that lead to their performance so there isn't one equation that if you solve it your team will become successful. For some teams time management is their downfall. Others suffer bad game strategy in the early weeks. Others don't realistically know what/how to utilize the resources they have at hand to deliver the best robot they can. For me, I believe we suffer mainly in the design stage. Every year we nail down an extremely competitive strategy but by the time we have a good design of the robot we are drastically behind schedule and end up with a robot that just isn't quite what we wanted but still very good.