Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair ?

[Shankar M]

I'd like to address a couple of things here.

Firstly, I think the idea of teams attending multiple regionals allows for opportunities that would not otherwise be possible in terms of exposure. I'll point out a couple of personal examples.
It's always amazing to see some of the incredible robots that are at the Waterloo Regional and the Greater Toronto Regional. We have a multitude of home-grown talent, but there are always some American teams who make the trip up north that add so much to the competition. Some very impressive teams such as 68, 176, 217, 229, and 703 have made the trip up, however, if regional attendance were to be limited, I'm not so sure we would see so many of these teams up in Canada. Seeing some of these great teams is a rare opportunity, and allowing for teams to travel to regionals as they please is really the only way to encourage this sort of exposure. Great things can come about as a result of this exposure. For four years Team 4/22 and Team 188 had an international exchange program that saw us travel to the each other's "home" regional. Everyone involved had tremendous experiences as a result of the program, and many of us still remain in contact to this day. However, none of it would have been possible with a capped regional attendance system. Winning is not the goal in what we do. I think if people look beyond that aspect of the competition, and took the time to embrace everything else that makes up FIRST, everyone will come away much more enlightened, much more inspired, and much happier.

Secondly, it seems a lot of these sorts of threads are coming about as a result of disdain towards successful teams. People need to stop vilifying these teams and instead see them for the valuable sources of inspiration that they are. Talk to them, ask them questions, they will tell you all about anything you want to know. That's how you can improve. Also, the prospect of facing up to these "powerhouse" teams should never discourage anyone. It should instead be seen as a challenge that, like every other challenge during the FIRST season, one must find some way of overcoming. Team 188 has faced some pretty stacked alliances in the past few years (1114/1503 in '06, 254/330 in '07, 1114/2056 in both '07 and '08). However, despite who we are up against, we are never willing to settle for anything less than our very best attempt to beat our opponents. We may fall short in our efforts, but that only makes us hungrier to try again.

If a powerhouse team is at the same regional as you are, I think to a degree you have to almost want face them. You have to be driven to want to beat the best. There is really only one way to get better as a team, and that is to play against teams that are better than yourself. You don't have to beat stronger teams to get better, but I certainly think that the only way to get better is to be forced to push the envelope against stronger teams.

[IKE]

Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair? Right Idea, but you are asking the wrong question.

Soapbox time: (Please read because I think I am stating a new point for this thread even though it is not new to FRC)
Does competing in multiple regionals make you better? For most of the teams that compete yes.
Should the awards be limited?
They currently are. For several awards you are only allowed to submit at 1 regional.
Should teams be limited by geography? This one is interesting to me being a Michigan team. For the last several years we have competed in only in Michigan. This year we went to Midwest.
End of the year results: 1 second place, 2 tech awards. We were the #2 pick on Curie (I take this to mean we had a strong team) where as a 2 time regional champion was not picked. Would it be "fair" to those starting michigan teams to have to go up against: 67, 27, 217, 47, ......... Not really if fair is defined by everyone have an even playing field. That being said you will hear no complaints from 2337. They were the #2 seed on Curie because they got some experience by going against those strong teams at multiple regionals.

How many kids would want to play soccer if they had to do drills for 4 hours a night and all day Saturday for 6 weeks just to get to play 1 soccer game that decides whether or not they get the opportunity to play a second soccer game. Not many.

The right questions that we should be spending our time on is how to get low budget teams to be able to compete several times.
How to get a $10,000 season to include 3 local events, maybe 1 or 2 large regionals, and then a national?
How can we set up these events to not have too much out of school time and too much time away from work?
How do we get every team up to the level of these marquis teams?
How do we get people to come and see these events? (as Dean always says, if they see it they will get it)

Let me take a moment to compare arguably the best robot and best competition team this year and compare them to a sports team (the model we were told we are trying to follow). These is only from the information I have read and from talking with them.

There machine is elegant. If you really look at it the machine itself is incredibly simply. Given a 1114 kit, most teams could get that made in 6 weeks. For football, most schools have enough atheletes to field a team. 1114 attended 3 events. Most high school football teams attend about 10 games. 1114 practices. Almost every high school sports team practices 4 or more times a week for 3+ months. By High School Sports team standards, they would just be an average team. Below average in many respects, and really only above average in terms of their success. My conclusion would be that it must be a pretty weak sport.

With 1500 teams nationwide FIRST is ready and needs to take the next quantum leap into figuring out how to truly give every student an opportunity to compete. IMO they have done this by having lower budget competitions Like FTC. If you don't have the budget to have a killer FRC team maybe FTC might be a better fit.

At one point in time having a full size basketball court and gym was considered an unfair advantage to High Budget schools. Now it is considered the norm. I would like those that feel that "high budget" teams have too big of an advantage to talk with those teams an you might be surprised by the number of these teams working very hard to reduce the price events and make them more readily avaialbe so everyone can compete at their level. If you don't beleive me stop by the pits of team 33 and talk to Jim Zondag. The arguments I present here are a lot of the arguments he has expressed to me. Look up pretty much any WFA winner from a team that has been around more than 4 years and hear what they have to say.

One task for low budget teams: review your situation and think hard about how you too can attend a second regional (Better use of funds, possibly comp and pitcrew only to 1 regional and everybody to the second, more sponsorship, better off-season fundraising). Read up on Chairman Award winning teams because the answers are usually there. Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.

My task for FIRST is to come up with a way to be more like a sport and not cost $20,000 to have a strong team. Their answer may very well may be FTC.

I am stepping down from my soapbox now. Thanks for reading and good luck.

[jasper.s.jacobs]

there is no reason why teams should ever be limited in the regionals they go to no matter where it is. It would be quite different if someone like 1114 or 987 went to one regional every weekend just so they could beat the bejesus out of every team possible, but no one would want to do that anyway because it is way too time consuming. Regardless, limiting the regionals a team can go to ruins the competitive spirit of the game, and if rookie teams want it to be easier to compete then they shouldn't be in first in the first place; they should be striving to be the best they possibly can be. That to me at least is what first is all about.

also, there may be a reason that teams travel far to go to regionals, maybe they are looking to finding better competition, so they go to regionals where other teams go. I find it very hard to believe that a good team would travel a long distance just to go to a regional that would be easier for them to trample the competition.

on a side note, I dont understand why people have been making such a big fuss about teams that won 3 regionals like 1114. They may have won 3 regionals, but that is only because they went to 3 regionals. My team only went to two regionals, and we won all of them

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by skippy178

I'm not against "teaching". I am against the idea that a well-resourced team with (relatively) massive amounts of sponsorship funding, mentors and facilities can travel around squashing the "little guys", who are the new rookie teams that Dean Kamen and others so desparately want to attract to this competition.

Whether you realised it or not, you saw it happen this weekend in Atlanta, where the highest ever team number to be a Championship Winner in the finals alliance was team 1114. That means there are over half the teams with numbers above that who have NEVER been to that dizzying level.

Looking at

http://www2.usfirst.org/2008comp/eve...in/awards.html

the Rookie awards were for teams 2352 and 2599, who are 1200+ team numbers AFTER those in the Winners alliance. How many years will it be before we see those teams being part of the winning alliances ?

J

Maybe 5 seasons from now, just like it took 1114 six seasons to get to where they are now? Or maybe far less. Do you realize that a rookie team was 2nd seed in Curie, and went on to the semi-finals, in which they won a match? And that a 2nd year team was in the Curie finals?

Originally Posted by dsm

It seems to me that you have a classic issue of "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" -- and if that is a FIRST precept, then I must excuse myself and find another program to inspire students, because this one is clearly not for me.

I'm not sure where you get this. Rich teams get poor - at least one example was given in this thread. Poor teams get rich, by seeing what the rich teams do and emulating them. They go out and find more sponsors and mentors. They learn from the "rich" teams, most of whom are very willing to teach and mentor the other teams.

Originally Posted by dsm

I think the problem is not that the "Best Teams" excel, it is that in doing so, they often prevent "Pretty Good Teams" from excelling too. The answer is clearly NOT to keep the Best Teams from /going/ to additional regionals, because certainly they set an example of something to strive for, etc.

How can this be, since every "Best Team" that wins a regional does it with 2 other teams on their alliance?

Originally Posted by dsm

But the issue of how awards and Atlanta invitations are handled is a bit problematic, I think.

As it stands, I believe when a team wins a regional and already has a slot in Atlanta, their Championship slot is opened up to whoever happens to register for it first. This seems somewhat unfair to, for example, the alliance that just barely lost the last round of the finals at that regional. It would seem to make more sense if they awarded "deferred" slots (for lack of a better term) in some sort of logical order, rather than just randomly. After all, there are already open slots available for first-come-first-serve registration.

Please read the Championship eligibility criteria here: http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...nt.aspx?id=944 - something that has been posted since last fall. Teams that didn't go to the Championships last year had equal opportunity to sign up and pre-pay for Championships this year. When the available slots were not filled, they opened up Championship registration to every team. The waiting list for Champs was formed only after the registration process was opened to all teams. As the teams qualifying from regionals were determined, those teams next on the waiting list were contacted to finalize their Championship registrations.

Originally Posted by dsm

For awards, if one of the Best Teams does a lot of Award X kind of work, for example, and wins that award at three different regionals, it again seems unfair to the runner-up Pretty Good Teams also striving for Award X. Maybe some clause should be included that once you win an award at a regional, you forfeit that award at any other regionals? Something like that?

Some might say that this now seems unfair to the Best Teams. Why shouldn't they get Award X at every regional if they deserve it more than the Pretty Good Teams? After all, they're the Best at X. My answer to that is that I personally believe that you should share the opportunities, and that you should strive (and strive hard) to beat your opponents, but not to crush and humiliate them -- that is how you can be "professional" and win, but still be a "gracious" winner.

There is no need to do a three-peat at regionals to prove you're the best at X -- that's precisely what the Championship is for, after all.

Hmm, 1025 won the Motorola Quality award at Detroit, one of the regionals where Rush competed. 27 won it at Great Lakes and at Atlanta. If the "best at X" theory holds, why did they not win it at Detroit as well?

Originally Posted by jasper.s.jacobs

there is no reason why teams should ever be limited in the regionals they go to no matter where it is. It would be quite different if someone like 1114 or 987 went to one regional every weekend just so they could beat the bejesus out of every team possible, but no one would want to do that anyway because it is way too time consuming. Regardless, limiting the regionals a team can go to ruins the competitive spirit of the game, and if rookie teams want it to be easier to compete then they shouldn't be in first in the first place; they should be striving to be the best they possibly can be. That to me at least is what first is all about.

also, there may be a reason that teams travel far to go to regionals, maybe they are looking to finding better competition, so they go to regionals where other teams go. I find it very hard to believe that a good team would travel a long distance just to go to a regional that would be easier for them to trample the competition.

Precisely.