PCH 2017

[NoahMinter]

However, as you've said, there are teams that have plenty of all 5 and yet, we're still having this discussion. So obviously there are components that are subtle in nature but very important to the secret sauce of what makes a team truly great.

Agreed, I don't know if I would go as far as to say PCH (as a whole) doesn't have a competitive instinct, but I do know there could be more of it.

Faculty at many schools aren't usually very excited. Rookie teams seem to loose teachers before funds and outside mentors.

Or terrified. FRC is a HUGE commitment, and until they have seen the product, they may not be sold. Chances are though, if you can get the students behind it, faculty advisors will feel an obligation to stay.

[astro70]

I'm not sure about the magic formula for the top Georgia teams to "breach" into the edges of Einstein, but there are definitely some subtle lines to be crossed. FRC4188 was able to make it into the finals at Huntsville's Rocket City Regional as an Alliance captain losing to Robonauts (FRC118) and Bomb Squad (FRC16) and beating Children of the Swamp (FRC179) and Cryptonite (FRC624). The 4188 robot got a little worse as it paid the price for its sensitivity to tuning and a late change from tread to wheels during build season. Each team could come up with a lessons learned "page" we could all share - I'll challenge the build roster to post something on FRC Georgia Alliance facebook page.

District has some great potential if more teams could go to a Destination Einstein fields for part of their unbag time within a week of a District competition. It would be great to see teams doing more than get their robot running and have some time to practice interaction skills with the game.

By kickoff, I think the Destination Einstein fields in Georgia will have sign-ups for the traditional Week 6 pre-bag&tag scrimmage but also weekends before District events so this would be a possibility. Here is a link to the Columbus DE field registration page: http://destinationeinstein3.wikispaces.com/

[MikeReilly]

I love the intent of the thread, to grow and nurture PCH, and teams in GA in particular.

As a longtime mentor (1771, 4509, and year off or two), the hours can be long, the most successful teams have the teachers/mentors who can spend the hours, or have a great balance of mentors to share the load.

Bigger picture, let's look at what IS huge in GA: football. Like it or not, GA is one of the top states in the US for football. Why? The feeder system: they start out as 6 year olds, many families even hold the kid back a year to get bigger. In addition, GA rules allow football coaches to get extra stipends in various ways.

As a teacher/sponsor, the cash is nice, but it really is cool to watch you folks light up with that FRC magic. The bigger thing: are we doing all we can to nurture the younger kids? I have also spent the past semester mentoring FLL, VEX IQ and VEX EDR, and they need the help in the younger years!

Look at the places where the top teams in the world are from, and I guarantee you that high school football is not nearly as popular (I'm looking at YOU Simbotics, my Canadian friends...). It's a long term investment, but that's why they call it a "farm system". Get out their and grow the younger crowd, it will pay off in the long run.

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by MikeReilly

I love the intent of the thread, to grow and nurture PCH, and teams in GA in particular.

As a longtime mentor (1771, 4509, and year off or two), the hours can be long, the most successful teams have the teachers/mentors who can spend the hours, or have a great balance of mentors to share the load.

Bigger picture, let's look at what IS huge in GA: football. Like it or not, GA is one of the top states in the US for football. Why? The feeder system: they start out as 6 year olds, many families even hold the kid back a year to get bigger. In addition, GA rules allow football coaches to get extra stipends in various ways.

As a teacher/sponsor, the cash is nice, but it really is cool to watch you folks light up with that FRC magic. The bigger thing: are we doing all we can to nurture the younger kids? I have also spent the past semester mentoring FLL, VEX IQ and VEX EDR, and they need the help in the younger years!

Look at the places where the top teams in the world are from, and I guarantee you that high school football is not nearly as popular (I'm looking at YOU Simbotics, my Canadian friends...). It's a long term investment, but that's why they call it a "farm system". Get out their and grow the younger crowd, it will pay off in the long run.

Yeah, they just have this neat thing called hockey. Youth sports are a factor everywhere, and while football is especially prominent in GA, the overall sports scene is not particularly worse than other areas in North America.

I agree with the whole idea of a farm system but I'm less sold on that being the defining difference. It really comes back to competitive culture, mentors, and resources. The mentors can build the culture and the resources, but all three have to be present to have a truly dominant team.

[PCH Uniformerer]

Originally Posted by MikeReilly

Look at the places where the top teams in the world are from, and I guarantee you that high school football is not nearly as popular (I'm looking at YOU Simbotics, my Canadian friends...). It's a long term investment, but that's why they call it a "farm system". Get out their and grow the younger crowd, it will pay off in the long run.

I'm not sure what your exact message is. If you are trying to say that the prominence of HS sports is what's making Georgia a weak national frc competitor, I don't think you have much evidence to support this. Texas is massive for football (high school stadiums in the tens of millions of $), yet still has elite teams such as 118, 148, 624, and 1477 among many. As the previous poster said, Canada has hockey. FRC doesn't exactly draw its students from the athletic crowd (yes there is some overlap). One could even argue that having a large highschool sports presence is beneficial for frc teams, as it would increase school spirit and competitiveness.

I think you are missing the point of my first post, being that PCH simply lacks the drive the be competitive on the national scale, and until we start pushing each other to be better, we don't stand a chance against the rest of the world.

[MikeReilly]

And this is why I stopped posting on CD, over-reaction to specific sentences and not whole ideas.

Yes, resources are essential, as are mentors. And no, I am not saying school sports and FRC are mutually exclusive. My point was: what are you doing to nurture the talent base at a younger age? Having been part of a team that won multiple regionals at PCH, a team that won a National Creativity Award, I can tell you that money, time and mentors can only go so far. I feel you need many things, but nurturing future team members is the difference maker, because that's what we didn't have when we didn't do well at the national level.

With that, back to CD retirement.

[PCH Uniformerer]

I think getting kids involved at a younger age is a piece of the puzzle, but more so in terms of growing involvement, which isn't the exact problem here.

Many teams are experiencing new member growth as their outreach programs started 3-4 years ago in middle schools start to yield results, but this member growth hasn't changed the core problem competitiveness. Whether a team has 5 members, 15, or 50, no pch team has yet to show they are truly dedicated to being the best they can be. Everyone seems content with low effort bots that get them 1 banner, a semi final exit at state champs, and a ticket to worlds.

But then again, there is no reason to be competitive when you have 18 half-champs slots for a district as poorly performing as pch, right?

[PCHuninformed]

Originally Posted by PCH Uniformerer;1622349

But then again, there is no reason to be competitive when you have [B

18[/b] half-champs slots for a district as poorly performing as pch, right?

wow, But then again, there is no reason to be competitive when you have 18 half-champs slots for a district as poorly performing as pch, right? How many i'd assume your team never won many blue banners and therefore you are very salty. :

[PCHuninformed]

blue banners are our only goal, we registered for the least competitive events for a reason... There are some perks to being in Georgia

[PCH Uniformerer]

I get the feeling you are not actually on 2974...

I also think you are missing the point.

Yes banners are nice. But like a lot of things in life, they are a lot nicer when you have to actually work to get them. The "value" of a pch banner is not very high due to the lack of competition. If we all worked to improve the skills level of everyone in our district, wins would become much more valuable, and our performance at worlds would greatly increase.

[frcguy]

I'm not associated with PCH, but this has to be one of the weirdest threads I've read here in a while. Am I correct in seeing that there are two anonymous accounts, one just passive aggressively saying the district is awful and needs to improve and one just trolling?

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by frcguy

I'm not associated with PCH, but this has to be one of the weirdest threads I've read here in a while. Am I correct in seeing that there are two anonymous accounts bashing on their own district?

Seems so.

Originally Posted by PCH Uniformerer

This year, with PCH being allocated 18 spots, we will send an additional 5 teams to their doom at half-champs, so I ask you, my fellow PCHers, when are we going to stop being complacent being the laughing stock of the FRC world? When are we going to stop creating teams just add a tally to our chairman's presentation, and instead focus on helping the existing teams?
I ask this because there is little effort being made.

I just wanted to comment a little bit on this since I have seen the competitive increase of Ontario specifically, among closely following other regions for awhile now.

I can understand your frustration, though I question your method to enact change. Not sure if calling out/raging at the teams (presumably in your region) is all that productive. The best way to raise the level of competitiveness from my experience has been to raise the bar by improving your own team's performance. Obviously it's easier said than done, but we can definitely see a trend in stronger region performance when one team breaks out and becomes super strong and starts winning everything.

[FrankJ]

Speaking as the one that registered 2974 for the events... We didn't do Gainesville for a couple of reasons. We try to avoid week one events. Also at the time the Gainesville venue was an unknown. We also liked Dalton. Columbus is our Prom weekend. Also that would mean back to back competitions. While I agree that Gainesville and Columbus are a little stronger, at least on paper, that wasn't evident at registration time.

The competitive side of us do like the blue banners. Increasing the competitiveness of the PCH district is only going make us better. While I rarely make statements here representing the team, we look forward to working in a constructive way to making PCH a better place. Part of which is improving the performance of all teams.

[MARS_James]

So I just spent about an hour researching and typing out a response trying to defend Georgia and it's teams using stats comparing them to my own state, which is directly south of them Florida. However it really came across like I was just praising Florida and not really coming to Georgia's defense. If anyone is curious to see stats comparing Florida and the teams it sent to champs to Georgia I have it, and will share it; but it really isn't necessary to what is the point at hand.

Georgia on average is about as competitive as other similar areas when taken as a whole (my stats support this). By similar areas I mean in terms of average age of teams, rough number of teams, and access to supportive funding. Even when you don't factor in the similar areas thing I don't think anyone can say that if you take an average team from another district (someone who consistently ranked around 20th during the season) and stuck them in Georgia they would dominate the Georgia teams.

The issue is (and once again my stats support this) that highly ranked Georgia teams are not on the level of similarly ranked teams from other areas; this leads to what some would see as disappointing showings at champs.

This isn't necessarily anyone's fault either, and is not something that has an easy fix. I don't think bashing teams, the district, or each other is going to make this any more productive.

Like I said above I have some stats comparing Georgia to Florida, and if anyone from any team (Georgia or otherwise) wants some opinions on what could make an area/team more competitive feel free to PM me or make a thread about that, not put it in this thread which was supposed to celebrate the districts 2017 season.

[Osseus_Dominum]

Originally Posted by frcguy

I'm not associated with PCH, but this has to be one of the weirdest threads I've read here in a while. Am I correct in seeing that there are two anonymous accounts, one just passive aggressively saying the district is awful and needs to improve and one just trolling?

I'm pretty sure we have more than 2 anonymous/parody/troll personalities by now. On the bright side, this means that there is actually one thing that PCH does better than other areas!