Keep FIRST in Michigan (FiM) from killing FIRST Lego League

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by leon r

Wow, just wow, this is first I am hearing of this issue in MI and am shocked by it! I can sort of see why they are doing this (mainly to accommodate FTC), but they are seriously shortchanging MI middle school kids from FLL experience! FLL is SO MUCH more than just robots! The project, the research, the core values and teamwork is invaluable!

The accomodating FTC part is the key thing here. Because of the prevalence of FRC in Michigan, there's no real place for FTC unless you move it to middle school. There were only a handful of FTC teams in Michigan prior to the switch and maybe one or two events, now both are much more common.

While pushing FLL back to lower grades may not be ideal, having FTC at the middle school level and making teams more prevelant helps students transition into FRC much more easily (speaking from first-hand experience as an FLL student who was totally lost when joining an FRC team in 9th grade). This may put FLL teams at a slight disadvantage for competitions, but maybe if the system works well it's something that can be standardized in the future.