Quote:
Originally Posted by skippy178
I'm not against "teaching". I am against the idea that a well-resourced team with (relatively) massive amounts of sponsorship funding, mentors and facilities can travel around squashing the "little guys", who are the new rookie teams that Dean Kamen and others so desparately want to attract to this competition.
Whether you realised it or not, you saw it happen this weekend in Atlanta, where the highest ever team number to be a Championship Winner in the finals alliance was team 1114. That means there are over half the teams with numbers above that who have NEVER been to that dizzying level.
Looking at
http://www2.usfirst.org/2008comp/eve...in/awards.html
the Rookie awards were for teams 2352 and 2599, who are 1200+ team numbers AFTER those in the Winners alliance. How many years will it be before we see those teams being part of the winning alliances ?
J |
I am a bit unsure of the point you are trying to make with this post. Are you suggesting that if the "powerhouse" teams did not go to multiple regionals that higher numbered teams would magically start appearing on Einstein?
Would 1114 or 330 or 968 or any other powerhouse team be any worse at Championships because they only went to one regional? Yes, they would have less time to make and test tweaks in a competition situation. They would also have less time driving in a competition situation (although for many or all of the powerhouse teams, not less time driving period due to practice bots). However, I would suggest that even with these teams limited to one regional they would still be the ones that come out of the heap at Championships.
The reason for this is experience. Not necessarily experience in terms of number of competitions (although I think this does help some), but experience in terms of number of robots built and number of different games played. These lower numbered teams have a lot of knowledge built up through experience. There are a lot of things that seem good on paper, but don't work quite as well in the actuality of a FIRST competition, the lower numbered teams have seen these or even tried them themselves and built up the information on their success or failure. Each year these teams have been able to look at the things that have gone well and the things that didn't go so well and have been able to improve for the next year. These teams have not remained powerhouse teams through sitting stagnant, the rest of FIRST would have long since passed them by if this were the case. These teams are constantly evaluating and improving themselves to stay at the top. You can limit them to one regional, but they will still be the teams left standing when all is said and done on Einstein.
I am personally extremely inspired by these powerhouse teams and seek to bring our team up to their level, not them down to ours. I think that these powerhouses establish themselves through competing at multiple regionals, so I would like to see the rules regarding this remain the way they are.