Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginger Power
With the current state qualification system, great teams (sometimes the best teams) miss out on qualifying for a competition that is supposed to (in my mind) determine the best robots. I won't pretend to know the solution to this issue, but I know taking a second event into consideration in some way would help.
The question we really have to answer is: What is the purpose of the state championship? Is it to determine the best robots? The best teams? Is it to showcase FIRST in yet another off-season event? If we want to think of FRC as a sport, I think the purpose of the state championship should be to determine the best robots (athletes) in Minnesota.
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I think one reason the MSHSL tournament misses out on some of the best teams each year is because of the chairman's system we have set in place. If like you said we want to be a competitive tournament then we should not give 10 points towards every team that submits chairman's or even give teams that win chairman's at the regional level a spot to the tournament. Honestly I have my team submit chairman's every year even if we do very little outreach because we know we will get those points towards the state tournament.
I think the goals for the state tournament was that it is meant to showcase FIRST in Minnesota and usually when you have media personnel at events like these, you have them talk to kids who can inspire others through communicating with the news or a journalist. It normally makes for a better story if they are talking with students that can coherently convey the message of FIRST and do stuff for there community. I'm not in anyway saying that other teams cannot do this but usually you'll find that teams that produce chairman's submissions or have a strong speakers know how to make FIRST look good.
I think Minnesota needs to figure out their goals before going forward and changing their qualification system. If we want higher caliber teams at the state championship level then maybe implement something like you said, average of all the regionals a team attends. But if our goal is to inspire more like a showcase system and less like a competition it might be better to keep with the same system, from my experience a team are more likely to change their ways (from one regional to multiple) if they are invited to events like the MSHSL's competition or champs. If the state competition instead limits that opportunity for teams that for some reason do not currently go to more than one event there might be less of an attempt to try to get better.