[Stu Bloom]

I am an engineer on one of last year's rookie teams. Having an even team number, and not winning any qualifying competitions/awards meant we were not able to attend nationals last year. That was easy to swallow, as I feel most rookie teams have a ton to learn and are not really prepared to compete at nationals anyway. However we did expect to at least have the opportunity to try to register for nationals this year, then with the announcement of this new qualification system it seems that opportunity has been taken away (unless we can earn it thru one of the other “current year” qualifiers).

If I understand these new criteria (please correct me if I am wrong), excluding the award/competition based criteria, the 6 tier system helps to assure that teams will have ”a chance to register for nationals” at least once every 6 years, depending on demand and "lottery" luck. If I am reading this correctly our team would be in tier 2 this year (did not attend last year, and did not exist prior to that), which is the fifth level away from being eligible to register. I would say that assures we will NOT have an un-earned opportunity this year. While I don't think that is necessarily unfair, it sure is disappointing.

I would suggest one small adjustment. I think the 6 tiers should be reduced to four. With most high school careers lasting 4 years that would give 4-year team members at least one potential chance during their tenure to attend nationals. I was fortunate enough to attend with another team that I worked with in 2002, and I think it is something that everyone should be able to experience. For a student to come into the program at the "wrong time" and have the timing exclude that possibility (again assuming that the team did not otherwise earn a spot) just doesn't seem fair.

I suppose it would take a lot of conjecture and a bunch of number crunching to figure out, but maybe there won’t be enough tier 5 and 6 teams to fill all available spots.