Quote:
Originally Posted by Citrus Dad
Promotion/relegation is about consistency year to year. It's also about one of the most important lessons that you can teach a teenager--patience and persistence. Year to year consistency is more likely to lead to sustainability. Erratic team performance is more likely to see the demise of that team. We need to encourage consistency while teaching patience and persistence.
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Let me ask you this: This whole competition is about inspiration (as well as winning). Would YOU, personally or as a team, be inspired by winning multiple events and then being told "Sorry, because you didn't do well last year, you can only go to the Challenger event, and you can't compete for the one true World Championship at the Premier event"?
Or would you be completely and thoroughly "annoyed" (to put it mildly--there are other terms that could be put in the quotes and be more accurate)? Annoyance and inspiration don't usually go hand-in-hand, mind you. Matter of fact, I would probably suspect a host of rather annoyed folks not bothering to stick around for future years, or writing nasty letters, or writing nasty internet posts. You get the picture.
I disagree on the whole premise of erratic performance seeing the demise of a team. I've got a number of counter-examples that I can think of fairly quickly of erratic or semi-erratic performance that have been doing this for a long time--some of them longer than your team.
And for the Super Regional model... What I see (obviously, this would be in about 5-6 years) is that the District Championships will disappear, being replaced by Super Regionals. Two Championships become one, held in some city to be determined (BTW, you should be including Indianapolis in your list). It's possible that the DCMPs move back a week, compressing the competition season, but I regard that as unlikely.
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Past teams:
2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons
"Rockets are tricky..."--Elon Musk
