[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by IKE

Could not agree with you more, but I took this thread to be about outside metrics, measurable, and correlations. (As a side note, I think it is safe to say that Robot performance is only part of "Team" performance this year with some highly effective Human players).

Thinking about it though, there are some things that could be measured.

Some great, "not entirely about the robot" metrics.

7 teams were recognized as District Chairman's award recipients instead of 3 from the regionals before. 3 went on from the State Championship to "The Championship"

A ton of Woody Flower Nominees were recognized at every event (regionals could do this too). I don't know the official count, but I believe it to be on the order of 30 or more mentors that got recognized (it could have been a lot more).
7 - Imagery, Spirit, Rookie Allstars......

These were pretty good "not about the robot" boosts for FiM. While not everything can be measured with Lucite or Medals, many things can be. For those that can't, please talk with those teams. Most that I have talked to really like the additional playing time, and the closer events. The second event was a huge thing to a lot of teams I talked to.

As for the recognizing the Woodie Flowers nominees, at the Wisconsin regional they put up a list on the screen of all the nominees before they announced the winner. I think that doing it this way is much better than the way they used to do it. You never knew who was nominated you just knew who won. Its nice to show the mentors what they really mean to you even if they don't get a trophy to show for it.