Selecting finalists at regionals

[Ken Loyd]

Why not let the top 20 teams at a regional form the alliances for the finals (assuming we have alliances at this years contests)? This would eliminate teams being selected by other teams.

[Mike375]

Although I'm going to sound like those FIRST folk I often mock, I think it's anti-FIRST to place exclusive importance on the team rankings. For example, in last year's competition it would work against the highest ranked team to be forced to pair up with the eleventh ranked team, perhaps the two robots can only perform the same task. One of those pie in the sky missions FIRST puts out is getting several different entries to work together to achieve a common task, and alliances being formed by rank would go against that idea. Also, this would virtually destroy any possibility of a rookie team with limited success participating in the elimination rounds.

-Mike T 375

[Wayne Doenges]

I'm glad they didn't do that this year.
We were ranked 30th out of 40 teams. We were picked for an alliance and came in second (after Team 71's alliance) and posted the second highest score (620).
So ranking really means nothing. Just go out and do your best and you will be noticed.