2004 Championship Eligibility Criteria!!!

[Joe Matt]

Originally posted by Raul
Team 111 did not win a regional, chairman's or inspiration award.

Raul

Well, you DID win the Nationals. lol

[Allison K]

Originally posted by BandChick
How many rookie teams do you think are going to want to return for another season if they have NO chance or a very slim chance at attending the Championship Competition?

Rookie teams dont have NO chance. Rookie all star is a qualifier.

Yes, I would really like to go to championships. It would be great if the students could have the experience of championships the first year. But I also think we have to earn our way there, just like all the other teams.

[Ricky Q.]

Originally posted by Wayne C.
To say the nationals are a true championship is false because many of the teams will be there simply by being in the right year. The event is an invitational plain and simple. To compare it with the events you mention above is ludicrous.

The goal is to encompass ALL the high schools in the nation yet we restrict the big event to 300 teams. Thats the problem. 400 WOULD be better, 800 would be better still. What's the limit? Who knows. But if nobody ever looks it expand the event it will always be 300.

WC

I agree that it is not a true championship, for that to happen the ideas of West Coast/East Coast regional champions moving on to a semi-final championship, then onto a culminating championship. But restricting it to that would cause a huge riot that I don't wanna be around for.

Expanding the event would be nice, but it would cause an increase in entry fees, no doubt.....Its been said time and time before, FIRST has a logistical nightmare with the championship, and they would have to re-think their plans before making it that big.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Allison K
Rookie teams dont have NO chance. Rookie all star is a qualifier.

Last year we followed Chatsworth's lead and offered to include rookie members to another regional (not the So Cal regional they'd be going to as rookies). Since they weren't part of our school, they had to have a parent accompany them. We paid for a rookie/parent, a talented jrhi/parent, a talented elementary/parent. They all had to be "behaving" kids and willing to work as part of our team. It was a great experience all around.

Don't think we'll be able spend that money on them this year, but we'll take those from teams or other schools we invite to Phoenix and nationals if they want to pay for themselves and a parent, and again agree to behave and work as part of our team.

[Mike Schroeder]

Originally posted by BandChick
How many rookie teams do you think are going to want to return for another season if they have NO chance or a very slim chance at attending the Championship Competition?

Since when is FIRST about the championships ( and i say that like i would the super bowl, or world series) If a rookie team starts in the program for the single purpose to goto The Championships, then In my honest opinion, they are here for the wrong reason.

Sure the championships serve a purpose, and sure its a great learning experience, but a rookie team from the mid west attending a east or west coast regional could be more beneficial, and not as overwhelming, our team, team 25 started in FIRST in 1997, not to goto The Championships, not to win, but to build a robot, thats what this program is in the end, build the robot, don't worry where you compete. in 2000 we got to nationals by accident, and won,

we are all allowed our opinion and i am not here to try and change people's opinion.

[Michael R. Lee]

Championship is one of the REWARDS of the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST isn't even about robots. FIRST is about changing the culture. FIRST is For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The robot is one of the vehicles or tools used to drive across the message of FIRST. Yes some of us obsess over our robots, even I'm guilty of it. But if you want to know why I'm doing engineering, its cause of working on that robot when I was a student on 180 (in particular Lexy and Fluffy ). I found that it was fun and exciting (well not tapping holes, sanding, etc... ) but you know what I thought I could do this. Its never been about the robots, they come to life for a season and pretty much are useless for the next. But its through the robots that FIRST hopes to get students interested in Math, Science, and Engineering. Just read the Chairman's Award criteria and maybe you'll understand why.

[BandChick]

Originally posted by "Big Mike"
Since when is FIRST about the championships ( and i say that like i would the super bowl, or world series) If a rookie team starts in the program for the single purpose to goto The Championships, then In my honest opinion, they are here for the wrong reason.

to be honest, mike, i forgot about that. Yes, championships IS a reward, and yes FIRST is NOT about building to win or to go to championships, but it's a great inspiration. Yes, regionals have a great effect as well, but nationals for me was beyond anything I could have imagined. If a rookie team had the chance to experience this I would almost guarantee that every rookie would return for a second season than just the rookie all star award winners.

yes, my team will be returning and we did not win any awards or attend nationals last year, but that is because of the inspiration we received from another team. not all rookies get to experience having a sister team, having mentors, having basically a second family teaching you the ropes.

So if rookies may not be eligible to attend the Championship Event maybe they should all get mentored.

Is that possible?

[RoboCoder]

After reading all of these posts, first of all I would like to say that I think it is great that this forum exists where people can express their opinions. I think it is a great barometer for getting an overall sampling of what teams may actually be thinking in response to announcements, occurrences, etc. Thanks team 47 for this great service

With that on to the way onto the matter at hand. While I feel it is in a sense awkward that this thread is going strongly into its 5th page and that much of the information is repeated information and/or opinions, I do not believe that I have read too many posts that were not unjustified or too far off topic. Despite the large # of replies, the vast majority of the posts were actually reactions to at least some part of the new Championship qualification guidelines. good job guys.

Sorry in advance for the length of this post, but I wanted to wait until I felt I had a significant amount of information and or opinion to post in order to avoid clutter and "worthless" posts, and now I feel I have enough stuff to say to really be saying something.

When the new guidelines for qualifications were released, I was quite disappointed. Not in FIRST mind you, but I was disappointed nonetheless, but more on that later.

Bear with me, if you will, as I share my story with you, as I feel it shows how the new guidelines will lead to some disappointed individuals and teams in the short run (I consider the short run in this sense to be the period of say 2 seasons or so).

2 years ago, I was a sophomore who was interested in robotics. My school did not have a robotics team or club for that matter. A small group of us, myself included, had begun to talk about having one about midway through my freshman year (around or after the build season 3 years ago). That first year (2 seasons ago), we did not really know much about first, there were only about 5 of us, and we had no kinds of sponsorships or fundraisers, so competing in FIRST probably would not have been terribly useful except in showing us what to do for the following year and inspiring us to do our best. So instead we mentored a Lego League team at the middle school across the street from us. The number of kids interested over there was even less than the 5 or so of us that were doing the mentoring, but I think we still made the best of it.

That spring, 3 or 4 of our teacher mentors went to nationals as part of a trip they were making in Florida and they got to check it out for a day or two. When they got back, they were so pumped about the event, and came back with video and a lot of stories, that the excitement was contagious. The next year (last season) we would definitely be competing. In the fall of last year, we went to enrichment sessions teaching us the engineering process, machine shop safety, etc, and found our primary mentors, a local university (Georgia Tech, just thought I'd add in a little plug for them )

When the build season came around, we had roughly 30 people who had shown an interest in the competition, and we were regularly going down to Tech to work on the robot, first designing, then prototyping, then building, etc. We put in countless man-hours into building the robot, as I imagine most if not all teams do during the build season, but this was our first year and it was exciting, new, and we were pumped about it.

After ship day, I expected our work load to decrease and we could take it easy until competition day. I was wrong. in the meantime, we worked out t-shirts, promo items, budget issues, scouting databases (those at the Peachtree regional might remember our scouting RV where you could get scouting reports for any team there) and a wealth of other things. Granted we did not have all 30 people working on all these things all the time, but everyone helped in some way, and I personally tried to do as much as I could, finding myself almost as busy as the build season.

We are an even numbered team, so we knew that if we were going to nationals, we would have to earn it. Being a rookie team, we would also be scrambling extra hard to come up with the money for travel and accommodations, etc in time. We ended up taking to awards, the J&J sportsmanship award, and rookie all-star award. Initially I thought that the rookie award qualified us for nationals, but someone fortunately corrected me before I got TOO excited lol. We ended up in a situation where we did not qualify on our own merit strictly, we were all tired, and had missed several days of school (several of us missed half of our HS graduation exams, which just happened to be the week of regionals!) . Also, finding the money for travel and hotels, etc would be a pain, even if we did manage to snag one of the open spots left. So, we decided to put the money we had set aside for national registration to good use and helped sponsor another rookie team to go to nationals to help with their expenses (they had qualified through awards to go to Nat's).

This year, I am the club president and am already putting in countless hours each week into making our club as strong and smoothly run as possible. We currently have 73 members, are competing in 3 competitions (FIRST, BEST, and FLL), and have sub-divided into 7 sub-teams. Managing this is proving challenging, but we are holding up pretty well. While we did not take home any awards at BEST, we did great for our first year, especially since only 1 of our BEST team members had been on the FIRST team last year.

This year, we are not going to nationals because we are an even team. We are not going to nationals because several of our mentors worked hard to help organize the move to Atlanta (drawing up proposals and such, they did not have a say in the final decisions and do not have any real power over who goes to nationals, etc just in case you're wondering, so we do not have an unfair advantage in that sense). We are not going to nationals based on previous points; last years awards add up to 4 points, 5 are needed for qualification. I am a senior this year and am already putting in countless hours per week doing all I can for the club. Thus, I will not be on a competing team as a team member if our team makes it in the future. We were really looking forward to going to nationals this year with them being in Atlanta, us being super-prepared and dedicated to go, etc. Now it appears that we will just have to work twice as hard to qualify....oh well

I hope that we make it to championships this year, and am a bit disappointed that our chances are so diminished, and that last years rookie all star award did not qualify us last year nor will it qualify us for this year. Had we started under the same conditions a year prior or a year after we did, then we would be going to nationals (either by even number, or rookie all-stars, respectively). Do we still have a chance at going? of course, and we plan on maximizing that chance as much as possible.

This brings me to my actual point (yeah, sorry this message is becoming WAY too long, but as I said, I have a lot to say :-P). Yes I am personally disappointed with the new guidelines. Am I disappointed with FIRST for laying out the guidelines this way? Not in the least. I am disappointed because now the chances of me being able to compete in the championships in my high school career are very diminished, despite all of the work I have put in helping this team grow from 5 members to 73 members. Of course I could have never done this without the equal if not greater efforts of our teachers, mentors, and all of my peers dedication. But once again, that is a story for another post.

The point is, that I am quite convinced that these guidelines are a good, fair way to determine national participation in the long run (once we see how they work they may need to be fine-tuned, but it appears to be a good system). by that I mean that I as of yet have been completely unable to come up with a better system that is more "fair" to more teams.

Sure you can debate each small point....should the original '92 teams have automatic acceptance into the Nat's? It is obviously a difficult question, as they have put in a ton of time and effort over the years to help form and shape FIRST into what it is today, and are still around. Personally I am leaning towards saying that this is better overall than not letting them in. I will not go on and on about justifying my position, I believe most of the best arguments have been shared on both sides in this thread. What about the tiered system, and the rest? same deal. I feel that FIRST has done an excellent job of finding a good system overall that I believe should be more or less fair to all teams in the long run.

While I have heard many people say that they do not like the plan or one particular aspect of the plan, I have not really hard anyone discussing what options would be better overall. So this is my challenge: to all of those who feel that this system is unfair, unjust, or basically not the best of systems overall, instead of just saying what you DON'T like about it, first mention something you DO like about it, then discuss possible alternatives to make it better I feel that this is the best option in maximizing the usefulness of this forum and the opportunity of everyone being able to share their ideas

It is disappointing that our Rookie all star award did not qualify us last year, and that had we received it this year it would, but by all means I believe it should be grounds for qualification. Essentially that is how I can say that I am both disappointed at the news of the new system, and yet happy with the new system overall

I am now approaching the message length max, and have been rambling for far too long, but this is how I feel and I hope that it has helped those of you who actually took the time to read through it all

please give me some feedback on this as I enjoy hearing different POVs

[JVN]

Originally posted by JosephM
Well, you DID win the Nationals. lol

The point is that if last year we were bound by the current qualification system... Wildstang would NOT have been in Houston, and couldn't have won.

[RoboCoder]

I would really like to apologize for the length of the last post, as I probably wrote in a bit too much detail. and for those of you who were wondering, yes I did have to shorten that last sentence (abbreviating to POV) to make it within the character limit.

On a related note: it appears the limit for characters in a post is NOT 10000, but actually 9962 :-P not sure whether this was on purpose, a fluke or what but just thought it would be an interesting tidbit.

Also, sorry for the lack of necessity and off-topic-ness of this post, but I felt a formal apology was in order.

[Jnadke]

Originally posted by RoboCoder
So this is my challenge: to all of those who feel that this system is unfair, unjust, or basically not the best of systems overall, instead of just saying what you DON'T like about it, first mention something you DO like about it, then discuss possible alternatives to make it better. I feel that this is the best option in maximizing the usefulness of this forum and the opportunity of everyone being able to share their ideas.

You could have narrowed it down just to that. Like Baker said time and time again, clear, concise, and to the point or nobody will read it (I didn't).

Good point though. I see too many people whining and not offering better alternatives that are fair to everyone.

Originally posted by RoboCoder
On a related note: it appears the limit for characters in a post is NOT 10000, but actually 9962 :-P

Actually, it is 10,000. You or your program probabaly isn't counting line returns correctly (which is 2 characters: one for carriage return and one for line feed). There are 38 line returns in your post, which would account for your number being off.

[dez250]

i am sorry for any argument i may have caused now, prior to or after any of my posts, and i am sorry for starting the O/T'ness of this thread. with that said i want to propose a situation to everyone. You all say that you want the nationals bigger and you want to go, but you may not qualify this year, so i got a challenge for everyone who is not qualified to compete.

GO TO VOLUNTEER!

The only way that first will expand and the nationals can contain more teams, is if the volunteer amount goes up. So if your team is not qualified to compete, go to volunteer. Personally if i saw a team down volunteering that was or was not from around the Atlanta area, and did not qualify to compete but went to volunteer, that would show more inspiration to me and prob many other people/teams then if you had qualified and went to compete. So please everyone if you do not qualify what is restricting you from volunteering at nationals. Sign up and bring some team members, bring some rookies and show them what the whole atmosphere is about. Competing is not the only way for a team to be at nationals. So please feel free to help out with FIRST and give back to them for once, what they have been giving us for 13 years, and that is competitions. And if anyone out there might be so inclined to help out here are a few links that will help you in your "volunteer quest". You can sign up on-line when the system is put back up at http://www.usfirst.org/volunteer/ and also you can get volunteer info at http://www.usfirst.org/volunteers/ !!!!!

So if you DON'T go to compete, go to VOLUNTEER!

~Mike

[Ryan Dognaux]

Woa this thread has exploded within the past few days! Let's get Bill O'Reilly in here for some topic mediation!!

This new system is... well it's what it is. Different. And I think it's pretty much as fair as possible at the moment. FIRST is getting bigger, the expectations are getting higher. I think it's about time FIRST raised the bar a little. However, I'm also saddened that the awards aren't going to be as important as they once were. What about Animation or the Inventor Awards??? The Regional Animation Award was just introduced last year, but what's going to happen with that this year??... Only time will tell, but my guess is that it will have absolutely no effect on competition qualification.

Also, with the veteran 1st year teams. They should be allowed to come back year after year after year, not because they're "better" or more experienced, but just because they happen to be the first ones to get into this awesome thing known as FIRST. I know there are teams out there who do A LOT more than 1st year teams, but they weren't here first. Plain and simple.

Wow... that's probably as long as a post you'll get out of me for a while..

[RoboCoder]

Excellent point dez250! (I knew I forgot something in my large post lol). By all means, if we do not qualify to compete, I will certainly be first in line to volunteer, and will encourage my team to do the same.

And thank you Jnadke. I know I should have been more concise but sometimes I am not as good at narrowing things down as I am at explaining things in detail. However, despite the fact that you did not read the entire post, you certainly hit the nail on the head; that one paragraph WAS the point I was trying to get across, no matter how indirectly I was attempting to do it.

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by "Big Mike"
Since when is FIRST about the championships ( and i say that like i would the super bowl, or world series) If a rookie team starts in the program for the single purpose to goto The Championships, then In my honest opinion, they are here for the wrong reason.

Sure the championships serve a purpose, and sure its a great learning experience, but a rookie team from the mid west attending a east or west coast regional could be more beneficial, and not as overwhelming, our team, team 25 started in FIRST in 1997, not to goto The Championships, not to win, but to build a robot, thats what this program is in the end, build the robot, don't worry where you compete. in 2000 we got to nationals by accident, and won,

we are all allowed our opinion and i am not here to try and change people's opinion.

Mike- all the teams should go to the Nationals. Frankly, the experience of attending the Nationals is the most motivational and fun part of the whole FIRST world. It is where you get to meet the kids from other parts of the country and it is the big event that FIRST hypes as the "superbowl of smarts". What team doesn't want a shot at the superbowl or is content to settle for little league when everybody raves about the big leagues?

FIRST is about motivating kids and being a part of a bigger picture. You don't need to win but everybody SHOULD be there. All the teams have something to share with the others. If team 25 could have gone to the nats in the beginning we would have. You were there and know that we wanted to but didn't believe we could. We weren't ready then. We certainly are now but unfortunately in the future may not be allowed to. THAT's the issue.

We'll have no choice but accept what is thrown at us. But we don't always need to be smiling about it.

WC