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Unread 21-03-2010, 01:23
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EricH EricH is offline
New year, new team
FRC #1197 (Torbots)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: SoCal
Posts: 19,730
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Re: Can someone explain to me...

Judges' Awards can be given for the coolest robot, if the judges want to do it that way. Just getting one doesn't mean that you were the All-Stars of the regional. It means that the judges liked something about your team or robot that either didn't fit into an existing category, or wasn't quite good enough in an existing category to win that award, or spanned three or four existing categories.

Let's put what you're saying into the perspective of a veteran team. What would you think if you heard a veteran team saying, "We were the #1 seed and got a Judges' Award [or, your favorite technical award--anything except RCA or EI], so we should have gotten the RCA [or EI] and be going to Atlanta"? Right, you'd be thinking something along the lines of "Hot air" or "Sour grapes" or something like that.

The RAS is the rookies' Chairman's Award (and Rookie Inspiration is just about the same for the Engineering Inspiration, though it doesn't carry the trip to Atlanta). There was a team in St. Louis this week: 4-9-1 record, knocked out in the quarterfinals, seeded so low there was no way they'd get into elims on their own. They went home with the RCA for the event, and a trip to Championships. On the other hand, in Arizona there was a team that was #1 seed, the winner of the regional, the winner of the Entrepreneurship Award, really good W-L-T record--and they won the Chairman's Award.

Chairman's has absolutely nothing to do with your ranking, your seeding, awards won, or anything else of that nature. Because the RCA is that way, the RAS, which is the rookie version, doesn't either.

And by complaining, what kind of precedent are you setting for next year, when you're eligible for the RCA if you submit for it? Are you going to complain, or are you going to learn from this year and improve for next year, so that whether or not you win anything, you hold your heads high, knuckle down, and get to work to do the outreach to win it the next year? The choice is yours.

You've obviously got something that the judges like. Cultivate that, and work on where you're weak.
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Past teams:
2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons

"Rockets are tricky..."--Elon Musk

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