2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[jdaming]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

This is garbage. FIRST is not about "elite teams." It is not about the finals on the Einstein field, though they certainly are fun to watch and an integral part of the experience. FIRST is about an engineering challenge, a program which allows high school students to gain actual engineering work experience and which inspires people to seek careers in STEM. This is why the Chairman's award, not winning the championship, is the most prestigious award in the competition.

When you lose sight of this, you lose sight of the entire purpose of FRC. If you honestly think that your success in the tournament better matching your robot ability should rank higher on FIRST's list of priorities than allowing teams you deem "unfit" the opportunity to attend and compete in championships, then you do not understand FIRST, and need to fix your attitude. Shame on you.

I believe I fall somewhere in between you two. I think that 8 practice matches is too few. If the only solution to that is to not allow waitlist teams than so be it (one team I have mentored was a waitlist team that got in). BUT the quote about "many Championship robots that simply were not Championship caliber" is entirely off base. If a team builds a "not Championship quality robot" but does wonderful things in their community and wins a Chairmans award are you really suggesting that they shouldn't get in? I can safely assume you are not but this is the very grey line you are crossing. Should "not Championship quality robot" rookies get into champs? I think we should try to inspire as many teams as possible without severely impacting other teams. In this case I believe teams were impacted by not getting enough matches, but the "quality" of robots is not the point as Oblarg points out.