Future First Championship News

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by T^2

Your students care about achieving victory, but since you don't care, you conclude that it doesn't matter for your team? Is the program for you, or for your students?

Most people who say "winning doesn't matter" have not won enough to have a balanced opinion on the issue.

http://www3.usfirst.org/aboutus/vision

Where does it say "win"?

In my humble opinion, we all win if our students are inspired to be science and technology leaders by mentoring these students in programs that celebrate the learning of these skills.

You don't have to win to gain inspiration.

[indubitably]

Originally Posted by T^2

Your students care about achieving victory, but since you don't care, you conclude that it doesn't matter for your team? Is the program for you, or for your students?



Most people who say "winning doesn't matter" have not won enough to have a balanced opinion on the issue.

I'm pretty sure he was just trying to say that he focuses on his team's successes (which are abundant) as opposed to their failures. 5125 won a regional last year and attended the FIRST Championship. Certainly competitive success is a goal for the team but they are not only defined by it.

[T^2]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

You don't have to win to gain inspiration.

Corollary: Victory produces more inspiration.

Of course students can be inspired if they don't win anything. If they do win, they'll become more motivated, more willing to learn, and more confident. My personal experience, at least.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

http://www3.usfirst.org/aboutus/vision

Where does it say "win"?

Originally Posted by FIRST's Vision

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

How do you have leadership without winning?

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by T^2

Your students care about achieving victory, but since you don't care, you conclude that it doesn't matter for your team? Is the program for you, or for your students?



Most people who say "winning doesn't matter" have not won enough to have a balanced opinion on the issue.

How do you know his students care about victory?

[Knufire]

I grew up about 40 minutes outside of Detroit. I can say for a fact that riverwalk area of downtown (including Cobo Hall, Hart Plaza, and the Reniessiance Center is extremely safe. I've specifically worked with charitable organizations to provide food and other necessities to the homeless people in this area. These are the people that are too docile and/or weak to actually survive in the homeless shelters, which are much rougher areas. Any reasonably sized group would be safe near the river, even at night.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by T^2

Corollary: Victory produces more inspiration.

Of course students can be inspired if they don't win anything. If they do win, they'll become more motivated, more willing to learn, and more confident. My personal experience, at least.

As a student who went to Championships in 2009, I was inspired by winning the 10,000 Lakes Regional but I was more inspired by attending FIRST Championships. We only won 1 match while at FIRST Championships but it is an experience I'll never forget and it is the reason I am still here today.

FIRST Championships is inspiring and the more students, mentors, parents and volunteers I can get there to experience it, the better.

[maxxman]

With the champs placed in this way teams from Michigan and Ontario especially will see the same teams at the regional and worlds.

Look at my teams situation. We are about 15 minutes away from team 4039, 25 minutes away from 1114, 45 minutes away from 3683, 865, 1241, and 2852 and no lie I can see the 2056 shop from outside my window as I type this.

So if my team will ever get the opportunity to go to worlds it will feel almost like the Waterloo or Windsor regional. We would not have the chance to meet teams from the south. It would just be the same teams that we have been seeing for the last 5 or so weeks.

So just like everyone else in this thread I will have to put in my negative vote. If there is any way to not have the dual champs happen I would love to see that

[bscharles]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

How do you have leadership without winning?

I definitely don't think "winning" in the sense of being the best team at an event is necessary for leadership. There are hundreds of teams out their, mine included, that produced many outstanding student leaders, without so much as winning a single award at a competition, not to mention winning the event. But they were passionate about their team, their peers, and the FIRST program, which is what made them outstanding leaders.

You don't need to win to inspire students in the same way that you don't need recycling containers to score high in a match in 2015.

Could it be done without? Sure, but it makes accomplishing the goal a helluva lot easier, and is arguably more effective.

[T^2]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

How do you know his students care about victory?

He said it in his post.

Originally Posted by ehochstein

As a student who went to Championships in 2009, I was inspired by winning the 10,000 Lakes Regional but I was more inspired by attending FIRST Championships. We only won 1 match while at FIRST Championships but it is an experience I'll never forget and it is the reason I am still here today.

FIRST Championships is inspiring and the more students, mentors, parents and volunteers I can get there to experience it, the better.

As a student who went to Championships in 2012, I was inspired by attending.

As a student who went to Championships in 2013 and in 2014, I was inspired by attending but I was more inspired by winning my team's division and walking onto Einstein. I was inspired by knowing that my and my team's efforts culminated in robots that were among the best in the world, and that I could compete against the best in the world. Now FIRST wants to throw away half those teams, and make victory half-hollow.

My team's loss in the finals of 2014 was bitter to me. But it would have been bitterer still if we had won, only to know that an alliance superior to ours was elsewhere, separated from doing battle with us by a bureaucracy grown fat, greedy, and myopic from decades of holding a monopoly on high-level robotics competition.

[Joe G.]

Winning, the experience of winning, isn't crucial. If it was, the only teams who would have any ground to be disappointed in the changes would be the actual winners of the north and south championship events

Winning, the objective, the thing you can point to and say "See that? We want to do that. What can we do to make our program better, to improve our chances at that?" is what has grown FIRST from 28 teams in a high school gym to where it is today. As a result, every team which uses it to drive them forward has a right to be upset. It's a proven motivator, and we should do our best to preserve it as a part of our program.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by bscharles

I definitely don't think "winning" in the sense of being the best team at an event is necessary for leadership. There are hundreds of teams out their, mine included, that produced many outstanding student leaders, without so much as winning a single award at a competition, not to mention winning the event. But they were passionate about their team, their peers, and the FIRST program, which is what made them outstanding leaders.

I agree you don't have to win an award or an event, or even get picked for eliminations. But, I think you do have to care about winning and you've got pick up some wins along the way (sometimes those wins are simply "We scored a point!"), which was the original poster's point.

[Kevin Sevcik]

If winning creates more inspiration, isn't that an argument for the 2 WCMP model? Twice the winners is twice the inspiration.

[T^2]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

If winning creates more inspiration, isn't that an argument for the 2 WCMP model? Twice the winners is twice the inspiration.

In that case, let's take it to the logical extreme, and declare everyone a winner on Kickoff day. That would work, right?

No. Two championships cheapens the experience. As has been said many, many times already in this thread.