ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective

[Citrus Dad]

I read this quote by Don Bossi at the townhall meeting in the survey thread:

The story for FIRST® LEGO® League, FIRST® Tech Challenge, Junior FIRST® LEGO® League is much worse. FIRST Tech Challenge has the capacity for about 3 percent of their teams at Championship. FIRST LEGO League, it kills me when I talk to a FIRST LEGO League partner for a country and I say, oh we can’t even send a team this year, we don’t have a slot this year."

And I thought about how the Chairman's criteria was changed to emphasize creation of new FLL teams. And I felt a letdown. I realized that what happened with FRC in championsplit is a complete afterthought for FIRST HQ.

I will now be speculating, but I think it's internally consistent.

FIRST HQ is primarily focused on expanding FLL. Given that LEGO is a major supporter of FIRST and the Mindstorm package is credited as an important factor for the turnaround of LEGO, FIRST HQ may be getting pressure from LEGO to continue to expand that market. FIRST recognizes for younger students just going to a "world" event is sufficient incentive, so having more "world" events is good for expanding FLL.

FIRST HQ's second priority is FTC. It fits into a smaller scale so it can be more cost effective in more middle and high schools. And it faces a strong challenge from VEX. FIRST HQ has to find a way to turn around the FTC ship. Right now it's lost in the championship event.

FRC hasn't caught on fire--it's not a wildly successful marketing tool to promote widespread adoption of robotics programs across the US. (I've talked about how FIRST HQ hasn't adequately pushed this model, but that's a different thought.) So FIRST HQ is trying to figure out how to keep FRC around at these events in sufficient numbers and quality to inspire the FLL and FTC attendees, so that they feel like they are part of a bigger event.

Ultimately, FIRST HQ sees an "AYSO" future which focuses on elementary school participation. Unfortunately AYSO hasn't been particularly successful at changing how the US looks at soccer, and it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on physical activity levels. Increased soccer interest is mostly driven by increased immigration. (The PNW might be an interesting exception worth looking at.)

So I'm afraid this whole discussion about how FRC is affected by championsplit is doomed to fall on deaf ears. We're just not their prime constituency anymore. I believe they have made a serious miscalculation, but at the moment, FIRST HQ isn't ready to hear that.