Thoughts from an Outsider

[Kimberly]

One thing I think should be explained is that the performance of an individual team is NOT part of the ranking system. It took me the entire rookie competition to figure this out. I assumed it was like other sports where seeding was done by individual performance.

Unless I didn't understand something correctly, I came to the conclusion the best robot at the competiton cannot be determined by which is highest ranked. The highest ranked team might be the best, or they might have just been fortunate enough to frequently be paired with alliance partners who were even better than they were. That would have to be confusing to any spectators used to other sports.

I also finally understood why teams spend so much time and energy on scouting, since that's the only way to be certain about the performance of an individual team. As best as I could tell, the better teams keep all the individual stats on other teams so they can figure out where teams would be seeded IF the seeding were based on individual performance.

One thing I never was quite clear on was why individual stats aren't kept - unless it's to de-emphasize the competition aspect and focus on working as an alliance. But then I had trouble understanding why awards are given to the high finishers, if it's not about competiton - except for the fact that the human brain actually likes competiton/ranking and it would hurt a sport to remove that aspect of it.

Please let me know if I didn't understand this aspect of the regionals. I'm also curious how it came about that individual team performance is not measured, yet recognition goes to the highest finishers. I've been asked for an explaination for this by some of our spectators and I simply don't have one.