[ColleenShaver]

I don't know if there is anyway that this could be considered a flaw with FIRST. It is the responsibility of teams to know who would be good partners for them, and prepare themselves. As a team, we make fliers about our strengths and strategies well before any events and have them available to give out to teams. If nothing else, other teams can look and see if you really do what you say you'll do.

Teams also need to go through all the teams at the competition and rank them in terms of who they think is their best options for partners. Just because someone is ranked highly doesn't mean a lower seeded team isn't better suited as a partner, as has been mentioned several times in this thread. We consider many elements when choosing partners, including but not limited to their performance in objectives we see important, their reliability, friendliness/'good to work with', etc. As Ken said, it's about having fun so you want to pick a team you want to work with and can form a real team with.

It's part of the game, and we've all been disappointed before. Teams will prepare as much as they see fit and pick who they pick. You just have to accept that it's what they think is the best, cheer on through the finals, or spend the extra time working on your robot in the pit to make it better.