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Re: Winning Multiple Regionals
I think there might be a problem with the terminology here. Whether it is fair, GP, inspirational, or fun to win more than one regional.
I have fun at regionals and my team has never won any award nor anything past the semi-final rounds of the competition.
I feel inspired by seeing some of these "super-bots" that look like a professional team of engineers made them (very few are completely mentor-designed, but that's a different topic). Talking to the students who made these and seeing how they did it is a great part of the competition. Seeing how clever some of the mechanisms on some of these bots are amazes me. The inspiration comes from simply looking at the robots and seeing how they preform, not necessarily how they do competition-wise.
I can see where the OP is coming from, because it's never a really good feeling when you know that there's no way you're going to win against one of these "super-bots". But I don't think that makes them any less inspirational.
I wasn't particularly thrilled to know that the alliance I was on was going to have to beat winnovation to move past the semi-finals, but I'll eat my hat (the black one that says "FIRST" and has the red/white lightning over it, if you were at the CO. regional, you probably saw it) if anyone can convince me that their robot isn't inspirational. (And I did have fun playing against them).
On the other hand, we must ask "Is it fair or gracious for one team to win more than one regional and thus prevent other teams from making it to nationals?"
I can see both sides to this argument.
If one team has the resources and ability to win more than one regional, they should be allowed to do so.
However, to reach nationals teams should not be required to be the best robot out of every entry at 3 different regionals. After all, aren't the national competitions for determining the best robot out of every entry?
Also, I think FIRST wants as many people to attend nationals as possible which is why they fill empty spots in nationals with teams who have not attended nationals.
Personally, I'd like to see teams only win one regional, but I don't think this is likely to happen and it would restrict teams from competing in the elimination matches at secondary regionals, which isn't necessarily something I'd like to see.
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Last edited by Mr. Freeman : 04-04-2008 at 01:33.
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