[FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

Are you sure that 834 was a waitlist team rather than points? I know that after declines 5624 made it on points (confirmed by their mentor, despite not being listed as such on the leaderboard) and 1989 was qualified at the same time, and 834 qualified immediately after 1989 dropped.

If 5624 made it on points there should be a red "DI" on this page. Since there isn't, I assume they hadn't received an invitation. 1989 also does not have a red "DI". If we can't trust that page then we're in real trouble.

Assuming that page correctly shows invitations, here is how I have MAR teams qualifying. These should be the 22 teams that FIRST allocated to MAR. Note that 193 is the last points team in this list and the link shows them as the last team to get an invitation. The teams after 193 that are shown as qualified either have the note saying that they are waitlist teams or have qualified with an award.

225 - DCMP winner
25 - Points
3314 - Points
5895 - Points
1257 - Points
2590 - Wildcard
1218 - CA
708 - Points
1089 - Points
1640 - Points
869 - Points
1391 - Points
41 - Points
1712 - Points
5401 - Points 
1676 - Regional CA
1143 - Points
193 - Points
11 - Regional CA
1923 - CA
321 - CA
6016 - RAS

Originally Posted by Monochron

I don't think it's a leap to say that FIRST uses waitlist spots, in part, to help make this happen.

Why does FIRST value the opportunity for non-qualified district teams to attend FIRST Championship, even more than the opportunity for some qualified teams?

[adciv]

Originally Posted by MechEng83

P.S. This assumes that team growth is uniform throughout all of FIRSTdom, which Michigan has been ruining for a while now.

Which brings up an interesting question. What will FIRST do if the existing team imbalance between North and South increases? When do we rebalance?

[Harrison.Smith]

Just curious, how many teams are let in off the waitlist every year?

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

What is FIRST's stated purpose of the CMP(s)?

If FIRST "doesn't want [it to be about earning your way], how come over 75% of teams will earn there way to a CMP in 2017?

FIRST said somewhere that they want every FRC team to have the opportunity to attend CMP once every four years. What does that matter if CMP is too expensive for lower resource teams to attend? Will FIRST reduce the registration cost ever?

What are the reasons for FRC wait list spots, but no other FIRST or VEX program to my knowledge intentionally preserves this percentage of wait list spots for their culminating events?

Things to think about. I think there are plenty of ways to skin a cat, with or without tons of wait list spots at CMP.

-Mike

IMO, FIRST is trying to give all teams the opportunity to attend Champs, but it's not their responsibility to pay for it. FIRST has extended a hand to those teams to give them the chance, as long as they can afford it, which I think is fair. That also might explain why the Champs lotto tickets stack up; lower resource teams that can't afford it one year will be more likely to be able to go in the future when they can afford it. And frankly, if a team can't afford to go to Champs many years in a row, I think Vex or FTC might be a better fit anyway.
I don't have the facts about how often Vex and FTC teams cannot afford the cost of attending their championship events in addition to building the bot, but I would wager it's a lot lower.

[GKrotkov]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

Are you sure that 834 was a waitlist team rather than points? I know that after declines 5624 made it on points (confirmed by their mentor, despite not being listed as such on the leaderboard) and 1989 was qualified at the same time, and 834 qualified shortly after 1989 dropped.

Well, 834 was 30th in MAR District points.
MORT, 5404, 1923, and 3637 were between 1989 and 834.

MORT had a Chairman's win bid to champs.
5404 got in via waitlist. (If I recall correctly.)
1923 qualified via MAR Champs Chairman's

Did 3637 get a waitlist spot or something?

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Why does FIRST value the opportunity for non-qualified district teams to attend FIRST Championship, even more than the opportunity for some qualified teams?

Are you asking if I know FIRST's motivations about this? I don't. Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but it sounds like you are asking me to justify FIRST's decisions without even knowing if I agree with them

If I had to guess at their motivation I would say that it is because they want a broad variety of people to attend CMP. FIRST's first Strategic Pillar is:

"Expand access and participation, broad and deep . . . 'Broad' implies in every geographic region, and 'Deep' means starting from a young age."

So they prohibit some teams who would otherwise qualify, and they allow a rotation of teams who would not otherwise qualify. Again, this is just guesswork, but I am confident in the basics.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Are you asking if I know FIRST's motivations about this? I don't. Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but it sounds like you are asking me to justify FIRST's decisions without even knowing if I agree with them

If I had to guess at their motivation I would say that it is because they want a broad variety of people to attend CMP. FIRST's first Strategic Pillar is:

So they prohibit some teams who would otherwise qualify, and they allow a rotation of teams who would not otherwise qualify. Again, this is just guesswork, but I am confident in the basics.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot or single you out specifically, I just don't understand the motivation for this decision and was wondering if somebody had a better idea.

I suppose using the lottery to send perennially bad teams makes some amount of sense.

It's odd that FIRST is pushing for areas to go to the district model so much when districts have the exact opposite philosophy on team advancement. There are no waitlist spots at District Championships.

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

Did 3637 get a waitlist spot or something?

This shows 3637 getting a wait list spot.

Originally Posted by Harrison.Smith

Just curious, how many teams are let in off the waitlist every year?

I'm pretty sure there were 59 waitlist teams last year, although that number is going to be a lot higher this year.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

perennially bad teams

What you call a "bad" team, FIRST might call a "competitively underperforming" team. It's possible to have a powerful impact on your team / community without performing well on the field. Maybe FIRST doesn't have a good method other than EI and CA (only awarded to two teams per Regional) to find them, so they hope that the waitlist will help them attend CMP?

It's odd that FIRST is pushing for areas to go to the district model so much when districts have the exact opposite philosophy on team advancement. There are no waitlist spots at District Championships.

The waitlist is still applied to District teams though, so I don't see a big difference. And actually all District Event Chairman's teams get to attend DCMPs so you can end up with more potentially "competitively underperforming" teams. I see your point that Districts reward competitive play with the promise of advancement though. Maybe FIRST hopes that the waitlist will still pick up those teams who weren't competitive enough to advance to DCMP as well.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Monochron

What you call a "bad" team, FIRST might call a "competitively underperforming" team. It's possible to have a powerful impact on your team / community without performing well on the field. Maybe FIRST doesn't have a good method other than EI and CA (only awarded to two teams per Regional) to find them, so they hope that the waitlist will help them attend CMP?


The waitlist is still applied to District teams though, so I don't see a big difference. And actually all District Event Chairman's teams get to attend DCMPs so you can end up with more potentially "competitively underperforming" teams. I see your point that Districts reward competitive play with the promise of advancement though. Maybe FIRST hopes that the waitlist will still pick up those teams who weren't competitive enough to advance to DCMP as well.

Districts reward performance on and off the field; culture awards get points too. I like that culture award winning teams advance because they have shown off the field success. I also have no problem with using waitlist teams to bring an event to capacity when qualified teams can't be found. If the issue is that districts don't reward off the field performance enough, then the solution is to increase those point values or give EI teams qualification to the District Championship.

Randomly picking teams weighted by how long ago they went to the Championship does not reward off the field performance. In fact, now a team who may have qualified with points partially earned by a district chairman's award could be denied advancement in order to let in a team that got lucky.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

I didn't mean to put you on the spot or single you out specifically, I just don't understand the motivation for this decision and was wondering if somebody had a better idea.

I suppose using the lottery to send perennially bad teams makes some amount of sense.

It's odd that FIRST is pushing for areas to go to the district model so much when districts have the exact opposite philosophy on team advancement. There are no waitlist spots at District Championships.

I have a story on this: Once upon a time, a team from Northern California was a "bad team". They built pretty bad robots that didn't work very well. Sometimes they didn't even move. They only had funds to attend one regional per year, and they often didn't get picked for eliminations. Then one of the senior team leaders decided that he wanted his team to be able to go to the Championship, so they worked really hard, raised the money and pre-registered (because you could do this back then) for the Championship. The team went, the robot didn't work (they won 1 match and placed 82nd out of 83 teams in the division). But the team had a great time, and met some really great and inspirational teams and came back with a new inspiration to do better and get more sponsors, which they did.

That team was 971 in 2006. The senior leader was me. While it's not the only reason 971 is a powerhouse now, it was a big part of that team's transformation. I have, and always will, advocate for the opportunity for "bad"/"undeserving"/"unqualified" teams to attend a Championship, because it can be very inspirational.

It's not currently in the district system to have waitlist teams at DCMP, but it could be. The difference is that districts are by definition geographically oriented. Those teams will already have played with most of the teams at their District Championship. It's not the same opportunity to meet and interact with the larger FIRST community.

I do not believe that split-champs is the right way to go. I also don't believe that it necessarily helps get more teams "the Championship experience". But I do believe there is value in allowing some number of teams who likely would never qualify for a higher level of competition to go experience an event like that.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Randomly picking teams weighted by how long ago they went to the Championship does not reward off the field performance. In fact, now a team who may have qualified with points partially earned by a district chairman's award could be denied advancement in order to let in a team that got lucky.

Yeah, that's the prohibiting potentially qualified teams to allow a broader attendance. I assume you would prefer only those teams who can qualify on or off the field to be able to attend?

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Yeah, that's the prohibiting potentially qualified teams to allow a broader attendance. I assume you would prefer only those teams who can qualify on or off the field to be able to attend?

I think you and Evan Morrison made some pretty good arguments about the benefits of having non-qualified teams at the championships. I'm not sure if I totally agree that those benefits outweigh the benefits of sending more of those on-the-edge qualifying teams, but I'm definitely more understanding of this change than before.

The point of my last post was to clarify that opposition to this change never came from a viewpoint that on the field success was all that mattered.

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

snip

Thanks for sharing, I find that to be quite inspiring.

Coming from a rookie team that attended Champs last year, I feel that it had a huge impact on our students. Just being there and playing matches, even if we didn't do great, really showed everyone what it's like to be in the "big leagues" so to speak. And because of that experience, we're going to work as hard as we possibly can to be back.

As I've said in prior posts, I believe students that get to experience events like the Championship and even play at several events each season are more inspired and excited about STEM than students who don't have those opportunities. Thus, at some point you have to decide what FIRST and the Championship is about. For some it might be winning, but for me - it's inspiration.

[Brian Maher]

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

I like this a lot and think first hq would too. However, with south Champs and the gigantic number of waitlist spots it may actually be a problem filling them if only teams who haven't been to Champs in a cycle are eligible. For North Champs on the other hand I think this could work.