2014 MN State Championship

[Richie_Richter]

It's sad not to see our friends from team 2705 not on the list. Especially considering they had the highest OPR in the 10,000 lakes regional. It's unfortunate that their performance in their first regional didn't earn them a spot, because they definitely deserve to be there.

If only we had more volunteers in Minnesota we could make the switch over to districts. There are definitely enough teams in the state at this point, it's the volunteers that's getting us stuck. We probably had around 10 people from our team (both parents and students) volunteer at 10,000 lakes regional in anything from field reset to queuing.

Either that, or I think we should make a change to how the qualifying teams are selected to reward teams that show improvement from one regional to the next.

Oh and BTW, my power alliance is 2502, 2175, 3018. But that would never in a million years come together.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Richie_Richter

Either that, or I think we should make a change to how the qualifying teams are selected to reward teams that show improvement from one regional to the next.

It's very difficult to balance fairness to all teams - Teams that improve over the course of multiple regionals are great and should be rewarded for doing so (and often are rewarded with spots in St. Louis), but at the same time we need to recognize that most teams in MN don't have the opportunity to do multiple events and show that improvement. Based on my count, 29 of 186 teams did 2 events, which means 157 teams did not have the opportunity to improve between regionals.

That said, since you mentioned 2705... Their first regional was scored at 4 (per the official numbers) and by my rough math their second regional scored around 54. With the cutoff this year being at 35 points, they would make it if we took the best score (which definitely isn't fair for those 157 teams!), but would not if we took their average score (29).

Another note from personal experience... last year, my team made it to states based on our performance at Lake Superior, earning (I think) 39 points. We only would have earned (I think) 19 points North Star... if you average those, we would not have made it to states last year. This year we did not, as we only got 30 points at Lake Superior. We would have gotten (I think) 51 points at North Star, and the average would have been enough for states.

It's very difficult to rank every team in the state in a fair and consistent manner. At least so far, the planning committee has decided that only counting the first event is as fair as we can be. If you have specific suggestions for alternative methods and why they would be fair, please PM them to me here, over e-mail, or on Twitter and I'll make sure the committee hears them... although there are no promises that any changes will actually be made. Sometimes our most vocal individuals, and the ones most likely to push for change, are those coming from teams that do multiple events, and we need to make sure that the other 157 teams also get heard.