Special invitations to Championships from FIRST HQ?

[ktemp1]

I am from team 4039 to clear up any confusion. In the recent reddit post, it was stated that we were "specially" invited. This is an incorrect statement. We were just incidentally invited because of the waitlist. I am very sorry if this had caused any confusion. To restate, we were NOT given any special treatment of any kind.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

If 217(or any team in FiM or MAR to qualify for CMP via waitlist, such as 3314) qualify for STL at MSC, does their spot get given to another Michigan team, or is it given to another waitlist team?

There are two types of qualifications that come from FIM/MAR: automatic award-based qualification (District Championship Chairman's, EI, Rookie All Star, and Winning Alliance), and points-based qualification (N highest ranked teams that are not already qualified).

The award-based qualifying teams are not replaced (when 341 won MAR Championship last year, MAR did not get an extra spot). The points-based qualification spots fall down the list until they are used by a team that is not qualified.

[Shifter]

Originally Posted by mdituri

My logical thought process would be that 1) they haven't been to worlds so they are a tier one team on the waitlist, and 2) their mentor was hitting the buttons in tims at 12 noon on the first day of open registration. OPR had nothing to do with it.

As the team's lead mentor I'll take the credit for getting us signed up online for the waiting list in the first few seconds back on October 25/12 when wait list registration opened. I knew it was a long shot but figured it couldn't hurt.

We didn't win a Regional or Chairman's or an Engineering Inspiration Award. We take our hats off to those teams who did. MakeShift were lucky and got in based strictly on our position on the wait list.

[Matt Ciprietti]

Whoops.

Sorry for the confusion, all - this was due to an unfortunate juxtaposition of ideas presented by the mentors to the team today. We were all really thrilled about our robot's performance in our two regionals this year, and were ecstatic about how high we ranked in OPR stats published by others as well as our own accuracy stats compiled by the team.

Like many others, we registered for the Championship waitlist as soon as we could, and like many second-year teams we have never attended before. So when we received notification that we were invited to go, everyone was ridiculously excited. In the ensuing pep talk about how well we did this season and how we surprised and inspired many people both within our own community and into the greater FIRST community, some messages got a little bit crossed, it would seem.

Regardless, all of the mentors, parents, and supporters of Team 4039 - MakeShift Robotics - are incredibly proud of the work that our students did this past season, and we look forward to being able to compete with the best in the world at Championships this year!

[Grim Tuesday]

No need to apologize guys, I can see exactly how the confusion would occur. Attending Championships is a really great and inspiring experience, enjoy your first one!