Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by nfhammes

I think there's a little nuance you're not bringing out here. If the goal is to have the best teams, teams who win RCA at their first event seems like an excellent way to ensure you get some of them. If the goal is to get the best robots, it obviously misses the mark, but that particular goal seems to do less to inspire kids and be what FIRST is about, that I would ignore it. (Admittedly, I wasn't there last year but...) I would love to see the MSHSL State Championship hand out awards to teams. Maybe they would be similar/the same/analogous to the normal FIRST set, or whittled down to a few important ones due to judging constraints, but I think that would go further in "figuring out the best of the best" in the right ways.

The problem with counting second events or not is fairness. If teams simply got credit for the better of the two events, (or even both events!) that would be obviously unfair in favor of teams with more resources. Averaging the two dampens the effect, and certainly allows a second event to harm teams, but many teams do tend to do better at later events, both through iteration, and sheer student experience, so you're still advantaging teams with more resources. Picking the first event seems to be the closest to rewarding "competitive" teams, while giving all teams a fair opportunity.

And on the topic of you "speaking for all teams" when saying that winning state is a big deal, it obviously isn't all of them, but the last time I was in MN, there were a good number of teams who see Winning State as a big deal, whose relationships with their districts and schools would be improved by winning an MSHSL banner, and would be further legitimized in their community. And I'm not sure those folks are well-represented on CD. I think it's not universal, but should be taken seriously. And MNFIRST knows this, and maintains a positive relationship with the good folks at the MSHSL.

In my post, I meant "best teams" as in the best teams on the field, aka best robots. Should've made this more clear.

I'm not sure why getting the best robots to the State Championship would inspire fewer kids. You're just inspiring a different group of students. Having the most competitive competition would inspire more students in my opinion by showing them the game being played at a high level.

With the current state qualification system, great teams (sometimes the best teams) miss out on qualifying for a competition that is supposed to (in my mind) determine the best robots. I won't pretend to know the solution to this issue, but I know taking a second event into consideration in some way would help.

I don't think "fairness" should be a factor, because I don't believe it's unfair to consider two events. Teams that attend two events worked hard to raise funds to do that second event. They put in the effort, they should be rewarded for doing so. The teams doing two events are iterating, and improving their robots in between events. When they show up at a 2nd event with a fantastic robot, they should be rewarded for that extra work that they've put in. If anything, it's more fair to consider a 2nd event.

I really like the concept if doing awards at the State Championship. Brilliant idea.

The question we really have to answer is: What is the purpose of the state championship? Is it to determine the best robots? The best teams? Is it to showcase FIRST in yet another off-season event? If we want to think of FRC as a sport, I think the purpose of the state championship should be to determine the best robots (athletes) in Minnesota.

Also, I wasn't the one who was "speaking for all teams", although we do share the same logo. Chief Hedgehog has taken back his comments, because nobody can speak for everybody.