Highest Seed not Chosen for Finals

[Andrew Rudolph]

2002 Nationals 10th Seed, we were 4th the entire competiiton until our last match we lost and that dropped us to 10th, and only one alliance from the top 8 was made.

[abeD]

Alot of times what happens when you're a high seed for a long time teams forget that you're not in the top 8 and for that reason are not on their lists of teams to pick. (happened to us in 2002).

[Cory]

Originally Posted by abeD

Alot of times what happens when you're a high seed for a long time teams forget that you're not in the top 8 and for that reason are not on their lists of teams to pick. (happened to us in 2002).

Yeah, we were in the top 7 all weekend until our last match. That can be a part of it. Another part is not selling yourself to other teams. It's especially critical to do so when you're in a division with 70 something other teams, where any one team can be easily overlooked.

[ajlapp]

just my opinion, but i personally do not put any faith in seeded position.

seeding relies almost exclusively on your partners, especially with so many penalty possibilities. if you have less than perfect partners for many matches than you may seed low, even though you are exceptional. on the opposite side many teams who seed high often get there on the backs of other good robots.

we rely solely on our scouting and knowledge of robots to choose complimentary partners, whether they are seeded first or last. if you are a good bot and end up seeded in the middle, but don't get picked, its most likely that people don't know you, didn't see you perform at your best regularly, or don't need your particular skill set.

[team222badbrad]

Well here are a few things I think are common in Alliance Picking:

Lower numbered teams usually pick lower numbered teams.
Rookies usually pick rookies.
Teams that know local teams or have "family" teams usually pick their local friends or local "family".
When I say family; I mean teams that have branched off of one certain team.
For example my team branched off of one team that had several high schools involved way back in the years of FIRST and now most of these high schools have their own team.
Family teams can also mean teams that have mentored a certain team for some time.

Remember that just because your team could have placed 8th does not mean that a team ranked lower than you could have placed 1st.

Our team has also been subject to not getting picked even though we thought we did well, however, this is not really the case for us anymore.

[KenWittlief]

the alliance picking proceedure is very fast and its hard for the team captains to keep track of whats going on

also, some teams dont expect to make it to the top 8, and do very little scouting.

[Chris Fultz]

I think many of the reasons listed here are good, but our selection process is based on our scouting, not ranking. There are so many variables in the ranking that are totally outside of a teams control.

We look at indivudual robot performance and how it would fit with our robot as a team. What is a good fit for us might be a terrible fit for another robot.

I also think as you get to the tougher regionals and to the Championships, the selection is also influenced on having a solid reputation to perform, and on how well you have performed what you say you can do.

[Steve W]

Ranking is not a good science to tell of ones ability. At the end of day 1 in Pittsburgh team 63 was ranked 16/30. The fact was that they had a lot of problems and really only moved once. They came to every match and tried all competition to get going. They knew that they were broken and even removed themselves from the pool for elims. I am not sure of the final ranking but it shows that ranking cannot be the prime way to chose.

Promotion of your team is also VERY important. Make others know that you are there and how good your robot is. Show off all of your strengths and how you could help the alliance. To do this you have to have had good scouting yourself

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Ranking is not a good science to tell of ones ability. At the end of day 1 in Pittsburgh team 63 was ranked 16/30. The fact was that they had a lot of problems and really only moved once. They came to every match and tried all competition to get going. They knew that they were broken and even removed themselves from the pool for elims. I am not sure of the final ranking but it shows that ranking cannot be the prime way to chose.

Promotion of your team is also VERY important. Make others know that you are there and how good your robot is. Show off all of your strengths and how you could help the alliance. To do this you have to have had good scouting yourself

Steve, your post brings up something I hadn't given any thought before.

Team 63 knew they were broken and couldnt compete. When you say the eliminated themselves from the finals, do you mean that they told everyone not to pick them?

Say they stay in 16th place on Saturday, and become the highest seeded unpicked team. Say alliance x wants to replace one of their robots, can a team tell FIRST they're broken, not to replace the other robot with them, and move on to the next highest ranked team after them? Or would the alliance receive team 63 no matter what?

[OZ_341]

In 2001 at EPCOT, we were 10th in a Division of ~80.

We also had the highest match score of the day. We were in 4th-6th place most of the 2 days.
No one picked us. (We had no noticeable image or Rep.)

From that day forward I pledged to make our team more noticeable.

[omutton]

We were ranked 28th out of 31 team in Pittsburgh and were picked first by the 8th place alliance. The teams realized that we had had some problems earlier on with our pneumatics that were worked out.

[Ianworld]

Seeding while it is one factor to look at when considering the quality of a team and their robot it defenitly isn't the most important. My team relies on our extensive team of scouts to choose the best and most capable robot.

In my opinion one of the most fun aspects of FIRST is diplomacy and getting your team recognized even though you may not have that great a ranking. While it defenitly isn't as important at some of the smaller regionals, at the larger regionals and the nations where often 80+ teams are present it is very important to publicize your team. No matter how many scouts a team has its hard to really keep every robot in your mind.

I remember back in 2003 my team was probably too good at publicizing itself. Our robot while capable, barely ran. After every match we had to rebuild the drivetrain, its autonomous was shaky, it only worked half the time(although it was effective when it did work). Despite all these problems we managed to get chosen first round by the seventh seed. We defenitly didn't deserve that position and probably hurt our alliance because they weren't allowed to choose another team that was more capable than us. That was ages ago, things havent' always gone that well.

[George A.]

Here's a "sob story" for you all. My freshman year (2001) the competition with the balancing ramp. We were ranked 6th in our division at nationals going into our last match. Once the match started another team and ourselves piggybacked over the bridge and as a result the bridge popped off its fulcrum. We stopped the clock and got as many points. We checked the final standings and we were in 9th place by .5 points! We didn't get picked. Needless to say I was crushed. To see us going from the allaince with the 2nd seed, to being knocked out of competition was more than I could take. Oh well, I used that as a sringboard to launch the rest of my FIRST high school experience.

[Spikey]

At New Haven 3 years ago we were the number 1 seed for a while then lost two matches and droped down to 10th we were not picked. We were very peeved considering some teams that were picked were from the bottom 40.

[jeremy562]

562 was seeded 12th in Manchester and not picked. We were shocked, since we were very productive throughout the competition, never tipped over, never broke down, and had some good matches with some of the higher seeded teams. Our record was 6-2-1 (that tie really hurt our rank), with the 2 losses coming in matches where one of our alliance members was broken.

At least we got into the very last match as a substitute for 175 (their robot took a beating and it's a testament to their design that it lasted as long as it did), which we unfortunately weren't able to win -- another robot in our alliance couldn't move, and our other partner accidentally committed a 30 point penalty.

We've decided that we need to be more visible next year -- our performance on the field obviously isn't enough! Keep an eye out next year for the team with blue hair.