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Jessica - I understand your reasoning from the perspective of teams and students who work really hard to produce a winning robot, so that they can goto the championship in their off year (even/odd year).
If you want to make attendance at the championship genuinely fair to all teams then you must:
1. take away the even/odd freebee clause - only teams that qualify by virture of their performance can attend.
2. no more of this nonsense of teams going to more than one regional until they win - teams must only be allowed to attend THEIR regional - regional means YOUR AREA! teams would be required to attend the closest regional and they must WIN in order to attend the championship. Period!
so there was what? 20? 25 regionals this year? that means that 3*25 = 75 teams would advance to the championship. No other teams can attend.
Is this what you really want? Do we really want to turn FIRST into a robot building sport?
The error in your logic is thinking that teams work really hard to win the Chairmans award. Not true. The Chairmans award is about 40 cents worth of plastic. With a Chairmans award and 50 cents you can buy a cup of coffee :c)
Its not like the Nobel Prize in inspiration - you dont get $5 million along with the award -its not an award - its an honor - its formal recognition - and thats ALL it is.
Teams that won the chairmans award, all those things they did they did because those things are important to them - they WANTED to do those things - they did not do them to win any awards - they did them because those are the ideals that FIRST is built on - and they ARE FIRST.
To imply that a team will work really hard for one year to win the Chairmans award, and then 'rest' on their accomplishment - that is really a insult to the teams that hold those honors.
The Xcats have won twice - they are also a founding team - their sponsor is also a founding sponsor (they give more money directly to FIRST each year than they give to their OWN TEAM).
They have also directly inspired ALL the teams in the Rochester, NY area - we all learned about FIRST from the Xcats - if it werent for their incredible outreach effort the other teams in the area would not even exist (6 to 10 teams, depending on where you draw the 'area' boundary).
And if you go back and look carefully at the critera for winning the Chairmans award, you will learn there is not one single point related to robots, your robot, your teams placement at any competition this year or last years. You can place dead last at every regional you attend and STILL win the Chairmans award.
Let that sink in for a while, and you will get-it. The chairmans award is not about earning anything.
its not about winning anything.
its not about robots.
Its about what FIRST really is - its seems like the real purpose of FIRST has become its 'secret mission' [inspiration]
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