Posted by Tom Vanderslice.
Student on team #275, ORHS/AST/Hitachi, from Academy of Science and Technology and Hitachi.
Posted on 5/29/99 1:56 PM MST
In Reply to: some possible alternatives posted by Joe Johnson on 5/28/99 7:36 PM MST:
Ok...basically every proposed idea falls into 2 categories...
1)
Teams don't find out they are going to nationals until fairly soon
before nationals...then they must arrange travel, etc...and things get
even more expensive...now..i really dislike this idea...(see other
messages) but i think it is better than..
2)
Teams qualify for next years nationals this year. This skirts the
'unexpected expenses' problem...but brigns up a lot of issues like...
first a foremost...SENIOR Student's mentality: seniors should be the
leaders on the team...but if the seniors get the mentality of my team
gets rewarded next year for what we do this year for the team...but we
don't get to see anything unless last years team did well also and we
get to go to nationals this year...students become less enthusiastic
when they can't test their machine against this years top machines...
one solution to this problem could be a combination of the two...
something that i kind of thought of while sitting reading these messages
kind of based on the concept of (gee of all 'sports' to choose from) PGA
golf...now i won't claim to know the particulars...but from what i've
gathered...golfers ont eh tour get to stay on if they've won $x amount of
money or placed well enough in different qualifying tournamnets etc...and
if you don't qualify then to get back ont eh tour you have to go through
some qualifying school which i guess is some kind of group of tournaments
where you can prove you belong on the tour (all you golf buffs out there
will have to help this story out some...but you get the idea)...
if we applied this concept to FIRST you could have the 'traditional powerhouses'
the teams that placed well in recent years at both regionals and nationals
and in the chairman's awards etc...and then the regionals can be the
'qualifying school' of sorts...so teams that have done well before KNOW
they can go this year...but teams that haven't or who are rookies still
have a chance at qualifying...now i haven't worked all this out i know
there are still problems with it...but my thinking behind this is that it
would alleviate some of the 'unexpected expenses' problem with not
qualifying until a few months before...while allowing the traditionally good
teams to get they're practice in at regionals etc...and not have to worry
about a hardware problem or some other glitch where they perform poorly
at regionals...but can be fixed...those kinds of things...
another idea i just had about #2 would be to keep the same game a few years
i don't like this solution either...i like the new game each year...
the new challenge...that's what makes it fun...but it is apossibility...
this would really turn it more into a sport that has basically a season
when ther eis a competition ever weekend and you compete for the 'big dance'
or whatever you want to call it...and in the end...that is probably what
we are headed for...the biggest problem is...how much school/work can be
missed for FIRST...but oh well...
I'll stop writing for a while and think some more...
Tom
Team 275