rookie teams for alliance partner

[Jaine Perotti]

I would like to reiterate what has been said here: alliance partners are picked based on the performance of a team, not the number of years that they have been in FIRST. Last year, my team picked a rookie team, 1272, as an alliance parter for the elimination rounds in the Archimedes division. We also picked team 45, a well known and highly successful veteran team. 1272 played an INCREDIBLE game, and we picked them for their phenomenal ability to collect and score with the balls...high scores at that...consistently. It would have been silly for us not to pick them just because they were a rookie team! We felt that their level of competition was a good match for ours and team 45's... so therefore we picked them. We ended up doing spectacularly well with 1272 and 45; we were division finalists on Archimedes, which in itself is saying something (Archimedes was quite competitive last year).

In short, the ability to play the game well is what ultimately determines a team's "selectability". Work hard, play hard, and do your best; that is what will ultimately help you gain recognition when the time comes to pick alliance partners.

-- Jaine