[Kimberly]

You guys are overlooking something. There's another reason it's beneficial to not have rookie teams on the same alliance. As rookies, we're learning about all aspects of FIRST. We learn the most from experienced teams. It seems to me the mentoring aspect FIRST promotes throughout the build phase, would be appropriate for the competition phase too. On an alliance with 1 rookie team, there are 2 experienced teams to offer help, guidance, strategy, etc. I don't see a down side to this.

While it's certainly possible for a rookie team to outperform many experienced teams, I think it's still in the best interest of the organization overall for rookie teams to get the benefit of what more experienced teams can teach them during that first year. The more experienced alliance partners a rookie team has, the more information it receives on how to be even better next year.