Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Line
The usage of school-grades as a metric is an exceedingly poor one, and it should be done by ages. At the same time, why deny high schools that may not be able to participate in FRC the opportunity to participate in FTC if they want?
Parents can afford to run an FTC team. Few could financial fund an FRC team. So you've just denied ANY participation to students whose high school/area doesn't support an FRC team.
FRC, not FiM, needs to take the initiative and clean this all up. At the same time, they need to normalize the age around the world. Split FLL into two age groups at the Festival. 8-12 and 12-16. Mandate that qualifications be done the same way. Split FTC into two age groups as well.
Become more inclusive but at the same time make sure you aren't having 8 year olds competing against 16 year olds. And yes, it's a competition.
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It's funny that people are saying that middle school FTC can't compete with high school FTC, because I distinctly remember several of Michigan's FTC teams doing fantastically at North Super Regional against end of high school aged teams.
I think we're just running into the consequences of how FIRST expanded FLL and FTC-- they gave them to a regional partner and gave them a way to plug into Championships but otherwise let them run how they want. I know there's some friction in Minnesota about how we do judging versus how FIRST tells us we should be doing judging. Now that programs are maturing in many areas, FIRST is probably going to want to standardize things more. It'll be interesting to see how that works.