Future First Championship News

[BrennanB]

These are just my own initial thoughts. Not of my team and or members. More things to consider for you.

I'm going to pull some information from FLL, and some people are going to hate on it because to some degree FLL and FRC aren't comparable, but hang with me. It's to get perspective.

I see people talking about percentages of teams that qualify for worlds, 14-20% of all the FRC teams in first qualify for champs. For FLL, ~85 Teams qualify for world championships. There are over 25,000 FLL teams. That means a whopping 0.0034% of FLL teams qualify for the World championships...

But. That's not even the best part of it. Not every region receives a qualifying spot. Regions are given spots based on a random lottery system. So you could be the best team in the whole world, and not qualify.

Oh wait, there is more... You can only attend one regional in your allotted area. That regional is only one day long where you get maybe 2 practice matches, and 3 matches that actually count. 3 matches. One day. If you have a bad day, sucks.

But wait! FLL is cheaper, we aren't paying thousands of dollars to participate. FRC is complex, serious, and sophisticated. We aren't playing with toys.

If you fall into this category go watch this, this, this. and this

It's hard to understand the amount of time that these teams put into their robots to package and have them preform as well as they do. I would even argue per individual basis, it is harder to be on a world champion FLL team than a world champion FRC team. Between all the time spent fundraising for the "thousands of dollars spend on competitions our" and all nighters on our robots, FLL kids put at least the same amount of time a typical team captain of an FRC team would put in, if not more. (at high levels of play)

So what? What's the point in all of this?

FLL kids are still incredibly inspired, and incredibly inspiring. And they have way worse odd than FRC teams. These kids are not ignorant, and really do care about their projects. They are doing phenomenally well with frankly, a terrible qualifying system. FRC teams can't complain with a 14% qualification rate compared to a 0-0.0034% qualification rate. Imagine going into a competition knowing that no matter how well you do, before you even start you have no chance at qualifying.

You don't need to go to championships to be inspired.

FIRST is solving a non-existent problem of teams qualifying to champs. Inspiration will occur and lives will be changed regardless.

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So then. What is the solution?

Instead of degrading the quality of FIRST Championships, increase the quality of district championships.

Don't make champs meh to the top tier teams that are doing a huge part of the volunteering, mentoring, team starting, event planning, and FIRST message spreading for us all.

Make districts a bigger deal. MSC has TV coverage, that's awesome! Find a big venue! Emulate champs to a larger degree.

Oh, and as much as it is the "all the best robots coming to the same place to compete"

I think the real magic is the "the whole world coming to compete in one place"

If the whole world isn't there, it completely loses the magic for me. Having just the winners play together isn't enough. You can talk to people freely, half the people walking on the street are from a team and it's awesome! To be having half of the world cut off from that is... Well meh.

I would much rather see a smaller percentage of teams qualify to maintain the atmosphere and quality of the event. Simply put, splitting the championships sucks.


*** I come from a a back to back qualifying FLL team
*** During my participation with FIRST, I have been on a team that has qualified 6/9 years I have participated.