2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[EricAnderson191]

The tournament structure, specifically average scores with no forgiveness for any mistakes, was atrocious. It's robotics - things go wrong. Consistency should be important, but if the first second of the first match can make your entire elimination run completely worthless, something needs to change. I never want to see the morale of a team so quickly killed again. I never want to have to make students play a match that they know is utterly pointless again. This must not be the new norm.

I disagree a bit here. A team at champs played at least 10-12 matches before getting to St Louis plus another 10 matches in their division. It is reasonable to think that most of the bugs would have been worked out. Knocking over stacks in elimination rounds is something that teams should have figured out how to prevent during practice sessions. The fact that some good teams who had been posting 200+ points in qualifications only to score 180 or less in elims points to plain old bad luck and issues with having drivers handle the stress of the competition.

At the same time, a bad match in Recycle Rush is pretty devastating. The X-Cats had a match at Finger Lakes where to get the average up our alliance would have needed a 300+ game while the other alliance needed to score, say, 50 points. Both scenarios were possible but not very likely.