FAHA: FiM - 3rd Event Quandary

[Bharat Nain]

Here is a simple and valid question to the CD community that is tough to post openly. Feel free to respond openly and honestly.

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FiM offered a third event at reduced cost but you do not receive any points toward state finals. How would you feel if you were a second event team going up against a third event team? Do you think the 3rd event team will garner ill feelings since they are messing up the point system? Should 3rd event team:

1- drop out and try to get refund
2- play regular matches but decline finals
3- just go and have fun but try to keep 3rd event status under the radar.

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[EricH]

The 3rd event team should make this decision for themselves. I know that if I were on the team, I probably wouldn't have signed up for three events (unless it was done without my knowledge), and I'd probably take option #1.

And I'd go out of state for a third event, but that's not an option here.

If I couldn't get out of it, I'd just go out there and play my best. I wouldn't necessarily decline finals, but if my alliance won, I'd try to offer the slot to the finalists in picking order if I could.


I'd like to make some observations about the FiM system in general, but this isn't the time or place. Maybe after the season.

[GaryVoshol]

This is no different than any other team that signs up for multiple regionals. If a team participates in W1, W3 and W4 regionals, qualifies for Atlanta in W3, should they drop out of W4? No, they paid for the event and should have all the rights that go along with that.

Every team had equal opportunity - maybe not equal resources, but opportunity - to sign up for extra events. While the district model changes some of the have/have-not inequities, it doesn't erase all of them. Should teams amply endowed with talented engineering mentors be forced to dismiss half of them? Should teams that can afford to travel outside Michigan to regionals be barred from the State Competition?

What the district concept did was raise the poorest teams to a higher level of participation, at a lower cost. It was not meant to harness the teams with the most resources.

[IKE]

As long as there are open slots, I am all for it. This helps pay for the event and will add another team to the roster. I warn any 3rd event team to think critically about it. If all goes well, this means your team will be doing 3 districts, 1 state Championship, and the Championship. This is a lot of travel and stress on a team. We have done 4 total events (3 reg and chmp) for a couple of years and it is really tough on a team. It can also be very stressful on your robot. You would feel pretty silly doing a 3rd district only to wear out your bot for the State Championship.

I do think though that if a team wins their first 2 district events that the class act thing to do would be to step out of the finals at their third event. That is just my opinion, and I completely understand the alternate view. I would just not do it.

[Clinton Bolinger]

The teams that are doing the 3rd event are needed for the FiM structure to work. Without them, events will not have enough teams to get an equal number of matches per district event therefore giving teams a slight advantage.


For example (numbers made up):

Full District Event
60 matches per district
6 teams per match
40 teams per district
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= 9 Matches per team per district

Spots Available District Event
60 matches per district
6 teams per match
30 teams per district
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= 12 Matches per team per district


Therefore the 30 teams that when to the smaller event have the possibility of a 6 point advantage over the fully event.

-Oris-

[ManicMechanic]

A related question, not specific to FiM.

What are some options (along with advantages and disadvantages for these options) for an event where some teams are eligible to advance, but others are not? We run a regional event for local high school teams, who can advance, but there are some teams at the local junior college that would like to participate, and they cannot take an advancing spot. From a participation point of view, we could really use the college teams -- our event had only 12 HS teams this year (max capacity of 24), and we only got that many because some teams "doubled" themselves (threw together an extra robot) at the last minute. Even 2 more teams would be good, and 10 more would be better.

At this moment, the jr. college teams are less advanced than the high school ones. They don't want to compete at the college level (which is could be an option), because it requires out of state travel. The local high schools and college are all within 30 minutes of each other, which is much more convenient for them.

What seems most practical to me would be to let them participate in both qualifying and elimination rounds, and allow them to win alliance awards. However, when it comes time to advance, strike the college teams from the advancing list, and fill any empty spots with next-in-line award winners.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.