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Rookie teams and second year teams
You won't see many comments from me here or anywhere else.
We were very disappointed when we found out that rookies and second year teams are being put at the bottom of the list ...
We were told:
The teams that have not attended for a long time have first dibs for Championship registration. Rookie teams are in the last tier, and one-year teams are next to last. Teams in these tiers will do well to fundraise for the year they will have a chance to register. We are sorry that we can't make all teams happy all of the time, but this method seems to be the fairest to all.
Thelma
The problem I have with this approach is that up until two years ago all teams had the option to come to ANY National Final that they wished to come to...It has only been the last two years in which teams were limited. (Correct me if I am wrong...)
As a new team, we have two years of eligibility for the NASA grant but since it is impossible to determine whether our team will be eligible until after the grant must be applied for, we can't "fundraise for the year we are eligible because we will never know when that is... it might be 5-6 years from now...
Here is the logic... OK we work our tails off trying to put together a great robot... who knows... we might even draw a couple of good teams during the competitions to work with...so we win a regional... or get a qualifying award to allow us to go...
THEN we can't go because we haven't fundraised enough...since the finals are another $10,000 we weren't counting on...
I really don't see why this is the "fairest" to all...
Teams from three years plus had eligibility for all of those years and could have chosen to go any of them... for whatever reason they didn't go...now newer teams are being penalized...
FIRST is a difficult proposition for many schools... difficult because finding dedicated teachers is tough... difficult because finding dedicated mentors is also hard... difficult when asked to pay $5000 to enter an event and then pay $4000 for each additional event... talking to inner city schools... wow let's watch the video and see how the little red robot that could qualified for nationals... ooops that wouldn't happen this year now...we changed the rules..... and now to top all of that...
Please come and join FIRST... we know you can't go to the Nationals for four or so years so you won't ever even see Woody or Dean except on videos or the television... or at the remote kickoff... but you can watch the video of everyone else having such a great time... yes you can do that!!
The rich get richer... but come on join the club!!!
send us money
Robert Steele
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