Emphasis mine:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pault
+1
Frank said the goal was inspiration and recognition. I don't know about the inspiration part, but the more competitive the robots, the better job champs does to gain recognition. I think people would rather watch 233 (who didn't make it to champs this year despite having an awesome robot) than a box of rocks on wheels. Also, being able to get in completely based on luck kind of cheapens the experience, at least to me.
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While more competitive robots make for a more exciting competition, teams that struggle to build Championship-Caliber robots are left out of, well, Championships (not saying this is always a bad thing).
To me, if there is a team out there that has never been to Champs, I feel bad for those students, because the most inspiring part about Champs is had simply by being there. These students can become inspired just by seeing all these great teams and often this experience goes down as being the highlight for many students.
The Championship experience was one of the greatest moments for me in high school, we attended two of the three years I was on the team, and we didn't qualify either year. I don't think the experience would have been all that much more exciting because we qualified, or had an amazing robot that just had bad luck at qualifying. One of those years we were the "box of rocks on wheels" but it made no difference to me.
Being the "box of rocks on wheels" that year was an inspiration to our team, seeing amazing designs by other teams was inspiring, and the year after we made a great robot and were finalists at one of our events.
The Championship experience was so meaningful to me that I didn't miss a Championship until this year, when college-y things kept me from attending.
I know the number of teams that get in off a wait list right now is small compared to those qualifying, and while I can't even begin to speculate what that number will look like with an extra 100-200 teams attending Champs, but in my opinion, if an open wait list allows teams and students this opportunity they may never have, I say we should keep it.
Perhaps the wait list could even be biased towards teams who have never been to Championships, or haven't attended in four years (outside the span of a normal high school student).