New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dtk

The top 3 Chairman's and Woodie Flowers award submissions from the state championship will move on to the championship pool. So there will be the same number of Michigan submissions as last year.

I'm not sure if anyone else has brought up this point as I haven't read all 200 some posts but I didn't see much discussion of Chairman's...

In order for your community efforts to be rewarded you have to have a viable robot able to get you to the State Championship? Since when?

Does anyone else question the reasoning here?

I understand the need for the simplification, as a Chairman's submission at every district is not a possibility, but are only teams who have competitive robots able to get them to the championship allowed to make their chairman's presentation? There has been no correlation between the two in the past. Yes, teams that win the Chairman's award generally are experienced and a great force to be reckoned with on the field, but that is not necessarily the case, and every team has their off year for the robot...

To me the Woodie Flowers submission is even more of a necessity for district competitions. Mentors who win this award aren't necessarily from highly experienced or strongly competitive teams and deserving mentors' teams may not make it to the championship. Are we tossing them aside because there team wasn't good enough? Are all of the submissions statewide judged regardless of whether or not the team is attending?

I know the district system isn't perfect and our criticisms won't have the blessing of foresight until summer but I guess we'll see how this ends up. I simply hope no deserving team or mentor is passed up because they did not have an amazing robot.