MaxPreps and Competitive High School Robotics

[Donut]

Originally Posted by ChuckDickerson

I know there is always a heated debate on Chief Delphi on whether “robotics” is a legitimate “sport” or not but MaxPreps currently covers cheer, dance, drill, and speech as co-ed “sports” so why not robotics?

While these sports are on the MaxPreps website I would hardly say they are covered by it... the drill section has 7 teams all in New Mexico and 99% of the teams in the speech area are from Nebraska. Looks to me like an individual state is using the MaxPreps website to track some of their information and it isn't well updated. I would argue that if robotics is going to get on the MaxPreps website there are a lot of other well established competitions (choir, marching band, chess...) that should be also and aren't.

I think we've got the content of MaxPreps elsewhere, it just needs to be more organized.

[Chief Hedgehog]

I would think that the most logical step for a state with a large FRC base is to get in contact with your High School League. Here in Minnesota the Minnesota State High School League has been hosting the MSHSL FRC State Championship Tournament - I believe it is the first of its kind in the FRC community.

If you can get your state athletic/activity board to recognize FRC as one or the other - you will go a long way to getting it recognized by MaxPreps. But MaxPreps is just one of a multitude of prep sport media.

Here in Minnesota, Football is king. And in our town, football is by far the predominate sport. Yet our Robotics team is gaining traction and we have had a lot of crossover from athletes into our program - and I truly believe this is a part of why we have had some success.

It isn't about selling robotics as a sport, but it is selling robotics as a competitive team that can open doors. If you can get a teacher or coach on board that can be a great ambassador of robotics a team can grow quickly. Success helps, but allowing the students opportunities matters even more so.