Frank Answers Fridays: Expanded Championship Qualification

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Dragonking

Next year we will have 600 teams at champs representing about 3000 teams. If all high schools had a team there would be 30000 just in the US. How would a 6000 team world championship work.
I do agree that if anyone could pul

I'm not sure why we're positing a linear scaling of championships. Wiki tells me there's ~15,000 school districts* in the US. (Add in other countries, but subtract a healthy chunk that wouldn't do FRC.) There are like 22,000 FLL teams in the World, and they have a very nice World Festival. It's darn near impossible to get into, but it means a lot. (I know it's "not a level of competition". But it's FLL.)

The point is, we can scale if we're flexible about our postulates. We'd need to tap many, many more resources to stay strong and stable at this size, and I concur that's going to be darn near impossible. But if we do, scaling Worlds won't be the way to provide a great experience and an inspirational environment. In fact, the idea that you'd need to a 2014-era Worlds to be so inspired would be downright laughable to these teams of the future.

Why? if we pulled this off, MAR alone would have ~500 teams (60% FRC). If 100 teams gets me young-ish teams like 1676, 1923, 2016 and 2590, then 500 with similarly distributed money and mentorship would be...whoa. And MAR Champs would have a steeper drop off than Worlds does now. And they'd all be closer to home! These top 10%-quality events would be a train ride away from a lot of the students in the country. Imagine a top 10% event in NYC, LA, Chicago, Philly, DC, Dallas, San Antonio, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, Boston, Portland, Cincinnati, Knoxville, Detroit, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, Portland... I'm not very good at this, but you get the point. It's a heck of a recruitment and retention tool.

*We also shouldn't conflate "FIRST team in every high school" with "every high school has a FIRST team".

[RKazmer]

What I really want to see eventually is a competition of different areas of the United States. For example, say Team A is running a district system and qualifies for "Championship" on the East Coast. Team A would then go to the East Coast Championship that hosts all of the winners from around the East Coast. From there, either national or international competition.

I understand that this isn't feasible for a lot of teams due to the multiple long distance trips and missing school/work for the events. However, eventually that could be a solution to the problem at hand.

[Lil' Lavery]

First off, a quick aside. When 1676, who just celebrated their 10th anniversary, is still considered "young-ish" in MAR, it tells you a lot about the team demographics in the region.


To those thinking a true world championship is feasible if a future where FRC is ubiquitous, consider FLL and why it has a "world festival" instead of a championship.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

First off, a quick aside. When 1676, who just celebrated their 10th anniversary, is still considered "young-ish" in MAR, it tells you a lot about the team demographics in the region.

Agreed; everything we're talking about would take a really long time. (Which is kind of the point, yes?) But if it does and when it does, I doubt we'll we worried about the fact that we have a 2%-qualifying World Championship/Festival. At least, no more worried than we are about every FRC decision. If we can accept that our growth would cause this, we can focus on leveraging that growth into much more local inspirational experiences.

[Lil' Lavery]

Not every region has seen the same stagnation in growth that MAR has. While, barring a game changer like the state funding Michigan has, the ~100 team mark seems to be the currently saturation level for the region, other regions have continued to grow. That's the reason why Championship qualification has become a contentious issue in the first place. FIRST bought themselves some more time by expanding the field to 600 teams, but they haven't really addressed the root cause yet or set a definite path for the qualificaiton method going forward. So far as we can tell, they want to keep the style of their premiere event the same, but even that is inference.

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Teams from Michigan don't have to compete for spots with teams from Hawaii, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, etc... But Minnesota teams do.

Us Iowa teams have no where else to go but out of state

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by RKazmer

What I really want to see eventually is a competition of different areas of the United States. For example, say Team A is running a district system and qualifies for "Championship" on the East Coast. Team A would then go to the East Coast Championship that hosts all of the winners from around the East Coast. From there, either national or international competition.

I understand that this isn't feasible for a lot of teams due to the multiple long distance trips and missing school/work for the events. However, eventually that could be a solution to the problem at hand.

Sounds like FTC and the 4 Super Regionals.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

Sounds like FTC and the 4 Super Regionals.

I think Jenny really hit it here. There are a lot of false dichotomies floating around (regional vs district, culture vs competition). If the program grows to FIES (FIRST In Every School), then regionals/districts probably won't exist as we know them now.
The model we use now is the model that works (mostly) now. As engineers we experiment and tweak (think Indiana model) and adapt and iterate. The future is a dark and mysterious place, and trying to force our current methods on that are patently absurd.

So it's really not a proposition of "our choices are A B or C" - the future may hold GHI. Or 7. Maybe Purple. Things that are inconceivable now, but will be obvious then.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Taylor

I think Jenny really hit it here. There are a lot of false dichotomies floating around (regional vs district, culture vs competition). If the program grows to FIES (FIRST In Every School), then regionals/districts probably won't exist as we know them now.
The model we use now is the model that works (mostly) now. As engineers we experiment and tweak (think Indiana model) and adapt and iterate. The future is a dark and mysterious place, and trying to force our current methods on that are patently absurd.

So it's really not a proposition of "our choices are A B or C" - the future may hold GHI. Or 7. Maybe Purple. Things that are inconceivable now, but will be obvious then.

In the presentation FIRST was giving to areas about districts, the super regional model is already their plan.

Districts > District Champs > Regional Champs (200-400 teams?) > World Champs

[JB987]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

In the presentation FIRST was giving to areas about districts, the super regional model is already their plan.

Districts > District Champs > Regional Champs (200-400 teams?) > World Champs

Fair to say we should be prepared for a longer season to handle the extra stage of competition? And if AP exams are still considered as a determining factor for season end then Kickoff would possibly be before Christmas?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by JB987

Fair to say we should be prepared for a longer season to handle the extra stage of competition? And if AP exams are still considered as a determining factor for season end then Kickoff would possibly be before Christmas?

From memory there wasn't much info on this section and it essentislly was just a rough flowchart.

The vibe I got from the entire presentation is that it wasn't terribly planned out, and the FIRST representatives themselves weren't actually familiar with team's experience in the district system (didn't know what the unbagging window was, wasn't able to cite any of the benefits that Jim Zondag can from memory, etc...)

Someone please correct me if I remember wrong.

[RKazmer]

Originally Posted by JB987

Fair to say we should be prepared for a longer season to handle the extra stage of competition? And if AP exams are still considered as a determining factor for season end then Kickoff would possibly be before Christmas?

It would have to be. If it goes to the model Adam has in the flowchart, there are four levels of competition. There would have to be many more weeks in the schedule for FIRST competitions. Assuming that the teams will go to at least 2 district events, that will be 6 competitions in one season for a team that would make it to champs.

Big problem with this: Each competition will be about half a week for kids that are in school, and the kids would have to take off the equivalent of around 3 weeks of school time that most could not afford to miss. While larger teams can send a contingent to different events, smaller teams or teams that don't train more than one drive team may see a major drop in grades or participation from the events.

EDIT: I know I had a problem this year with keeping up with school work and going to the 3 competitions that our team participated in this year.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by RKazmer

It would have to be. If it goes to the model Adam has in the flowchart, there are four levels of competition. There would have to be many more weeks in the schedule for FIRST competitions. Assuming that the teams will go to at least 2 district events, that will be 6 competitions in one season for a team that would make it to champs.

Big problem with this: Each competition will be about half a week for kids that are in school, and the kids would have to take off the equivalent of around 3 weeks of school time that most could not afford to miss. While larger teams can send a contingent to different events, smaller teams or teams that don't train more than one drive team may see a major drop in grades or participation from the events.

EDIT: I know I had a problem this year with keeping up with school work and going to the 3 competitions that our team participated in this year.

That's a flawed assumption. I know many of the District events here in NE were Sat/Sun affairs and students missed no school. We attended 4 districts this year and our students missed very little time at school. Then DCMP and CMP happened and they missed a ton. But still.

[RKazmer]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

That's a flawed assumption. I know many of the District events here in NE were Sat/Sun affairs and students missed no school.

I'm sorry, I didn't know about the NE districts, but as a whole, there will be a lot of school time that will be missed adding that extra step in the road to CMP. Even though kids might not miss for the districts, the other three competitions after that will be Thursday - Saturday not accounting for travel.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by RKazmer

I'm sorry, I didn't know about the NE districts, but as a whole, there will be a lot of school time that will be missed adding that extra step in the road to CMP. Even though kids might not miss for the districts, the other three competitions after that will be Thursday - Saturday not accounting for travel.

Why will they be Thur - Sat? My point was that, by removing practice days, events can be weekend only affairs. And once you're at the DCMP or higher level practice days seem less valuable as you should already have your bot working.