After reading all of these posts, first of all I would like to say that I think it is great that this forum exists where people can express their opinions. I think it is a great barometer for getting an overall sampling of what teams may actually be thinking in response to announcements, occurrences, etc. Thanks team 47 for this great service
With that on to the way onto the matter at hand. While I feel it is in a sense awkward that this thread is going strongly into its 5th page and that much of the information is repeated information and/or opinions, I do not believe that I have read too many posts that were not unjustified or too far off topic. Despite the large # of replies, the vast majority of the posts were actually reactions to at least some part of the new Championship qualification guidelines. good job guys.
Sorry in advance for the length of this post, but I wanted to wait until I felt I had a significant amount of information and or opinion to post in order to avoid clutter and "worthless" posts, and now I feel I have enough stuff to say to really be saying something.
When the new guidelines for qualifications were released, I was quite disappointed. Not in FIRST mind you, but I was disappointed nonetheless, but more on that later.
Bear with me, if you will, as I share my story with you, as I feel it shows how the new guidelines will lead to some disappointed individuals and teams in the short run (I consider the short run in this sense to be the period of say 2 seasons or so).
2 years ago, I was a sophomore who was interested in robotics. My school did not have a robotics team or club for that matter. A small group of us, myself included, had begun to talk about having one about midway through my freshman year (around or after the build season 3 years ago). That first year (2 seasons ago), we did not really know much about first, there were only about 5 of us, and we had no kinds of sponsorships or fundraisers, so competing in FIRST probably would not have been terribly useful except in showing us what to do for the following year and inspiring us to do our best. So instead we mentored a Lego League team at the middle school across the street from us. The number of kids interested over there was even less than the 5 or so of us that were doing the mentoring, but I think we still made the best of it.
That spring, 3 or 4 of our teacher mentors went to nationals as part of a trip they were making in Florida and they got to check it out for a day or two. When they got back, they were so pumped about the event, and came back with video and a lot of stories, that the excitement was contagious. The next year (last season) we would definitely be competing. In the fall of last year, we went to enrichment sessions teaching us the engineering process, machine shop safety, etc, and found our primary mentors, a local university (Georgia Tech, just thought I'd add in a little plug for them
)
When the build season came around, we had roughly 30 people who had shown an interest in the competition, and we were regularly going down to Tech to work on the robot, first designing, then prototyping, then building, etc. We put in countless man-hours into building the robot, as I imagine most if not all teams do during the build season, but this was our first year and it was exciting, new, and we were pumped about it.
After ship day, I expected our work load to decrease and we could take it easy until competition day. I was wrong. in the meantime, we worked out t-shirts, promo items, budget issues, scouting databases (those at the Peachtree regional might remember our scouting RV where you could get scouting reports for any team there) and a wealth of other things. Granted we did not have all 30 people working on all these things all the time, but everyone helped in some way, and I personally tried to do as much as I could, finding myself almost as busy as the build season.
We are an even numbered team, so we knew that if we were going to nationals, we would have to earn it. Being a rookie team, we would also be scrambling extra hard to come up with the money for travel and accommodations, etc in time. We ended up taking to awards, the J&J sportsmanship award, and rookie all-star award. Initially I thought that the rookie award qualified us for nationals, but someone fortunately corrected me before I got TOO excited lol. We ended up in a situation where we did not qualify on our own merit strictly, we were all tired, and had missed several days of school (several of us missed half of our HS graduation exams, which just happened to be the week of regionals!) . Also, finding the money for travel and hotels, etc would be a pain, even if we did manage to snag one of the open spots left. So, we decided to put the money we had set aside for national registration to good use and helped sponsor another rookie team to go to nationals to help with their expenses (they had qualified through awards to go to Nat's).
This year, I am the club president and am already putting in countless hours each week into making our club as strong and smoothly run as possible. We currently have 73 members, are competing in 3 competitions (FIRST, BEST, and FLL), and have sub-divided into 7 sub-teams. Managing this is proving challenging, but we are holding up pretty well. While we did not take home any awards at BEST, we did great for our first year, especially since only 1 of our BEST team members had been on the FIRST team last year.
This year, we are not going to nationals because we are an even team. We are not going to nationals because several of our mentors worked hard to help organize the move to Atlanta (drawing up proposals and such, they did not have a say in the final decisions and do not have any real power over who goes to nationals, etc just in case you're wondering, so we do not have an unfair advantage in that sense). We are not going to nationals based on previous points; last years awards add up to 4 points, 5 are needed for qualification. I am a senior this year and am already putting in countless hours per week doing all I can for the club. Thus, I will not be on a competing team as a team member if our team makes it in the future. We were really looking forward to going to nationals this year with them being in Atlanta, us being super-prepared and dedicated to go, etc. Now it appears that we will just have to work twice as hard to qualify....oh well
I hope that we make it to championships this year, and am a bit disappointed that our chances are so diminished, and that last years rookie all star award did not qualify us last year nor will it qualify us for this year. Had we started under the same conditions a year prior or a year after we did, then we would be going to nationals (either by even number, or rookie all-stars, respectively). Do we still have a chance at going? of course, and we plan on maximizing that chance as much as possible.
This brings me to my actual point (yeah, sorry this message is becoming WAY too long, but as I said, I have a lot to say :-P). Yes I am personally disappointed with the new guidelines. Am I disappointed with FIRST for laying out the guidelines this way? Not in the least. I am disappointed because now the chances of me being able to compete in the championships in my high school career are very diminished, despite all of the work I have put in helping this team grow from 5 members to 73 members. Of course I could have never done this without the equal if not greater efforts of our teachers, mentors, and all of my peers dedication. But once again, that is a story for another post.
The point is, that I am quite convinced that these guidelines are a good, fair way to determine national participation in the long run (once we see how they work they may need to be fine-tuned, but it appears to be a good system). by that I mean that I as of yet have been completely unable to come up with a better system that is more "fair" to more teams.
Sure you can debate each small point....should the original '92 teams have automatic acceptance into the Nat's? It is obviously a difficult question, as they have put in a ton of time and effort over the years to help form and shape FIRST into what it is today, and are still around. Personally I am leaning towards saying that this is better overall than not letting them in. I will not go on and on about justifying my position, I believe most of the best arguments have been shared on both sides in this thread. What about the tiered system, and the rest? same deal. I feel that FIRST has done an excellent job of finding a good system overall that I believe should be more or less fair to all teams in the long run.
While I have heard many people say that they do not like the plan or one particular aspect of the plan, I have not really hard anyone discussing what options would be better overall. So this is my challenge: to all of those who feel that this system is unfair, unjust, or basically not the best of systems overall, instead of just saying what you DON'T like about it, first mention something you DO like about it, then discuss possible alternatives to make it better I feel that this is the best option in maximizing the usefulness of this forum and the opportunity of everyone being able to share their ideas
It is disappointing that our Rookie all star award did not qualify us last year, and that had we received it this year it would, but by all means I believe it should be grounds for qualification. Essentially that is how I can say that I am both disappointed at the news of the new system, and yet happy with the new system overall
I am now approaching the message length max, and have been rambling for far too long, but this is how I feel and I hope that it has helped those of you who actually took the time to read through it all
please give me some feedback on this as I enjoy hearing different POVs