2004 Championship Eligibility Criteria!!!

as posted on FIRST: Championship Eligibility

"2004 Championship Eligibility

Preamble
The Championship Eligibility Process is being updated to better serve the teams participating in the program, and better support the core values of FIRST. The system used for the last two years, although appropriate for that period, could not provide a long term solution that would keep up with growth in the number of teams and Regionals. We were rapidly converging on a situation in which most of the Championship eligibility would be determined in the prior year or at the Regionals and a very large number of teams would be pooled to compete for a very small number of remaining slots. We think the new system will help rationalize the process. Its major features are

-Merit Based qualifying is focused on FIRST core values.
-Outstanding team performance or outstanding robot performance is the ticket. For a rookie team, a balanced combination is the way to qualify.
-Teams’ performance in the last season is deemphasized. Last year’s Chairman’s Award Winners and last year’s Champions are, however, still qualified.
-The pool of slots that remain will be allocated with preference to those who have waited longest to attend a Championship.
-In this transition year, qualifications earned by points last year will be honored.

Championship Eligibility Process
FIRST would like to thank all teams for their patience while we evaluated the Championship eligibility criteria for 2004. We worked to create a system that was fair to all teams while rewarding excellence and maintaining the high quality of the Championship. While transitioning to an improved qualifying system, some of the changes are effective for the 2004 season and a few additional changes will be implemented after this season for 2005 and beyond. We look forward to continual input at the forums to help ensure the eligibility criteria address the primary concerns of all teams. As in the prior system there are three ways to qualify.

  1. Prequalifying Teams (same as 2003):

-All prior Championship Chairman’s Award winners
-Original and sustaining teams from 1992
-2003 Championship “Stack Attack” winners
-2003 Point qualifiers based on the previous 5 point or more system
Note: The existing Point System will be discontinued after the 2004 season.

  1. Merit Based Qualifying Teams from the 2004 season:

-Regional Chairman’s Award winners (1 per Regional)
-Regional Engineering Inspiration Award winners (1 per Regional)
-Regional Rookie All-Star Award winners (1 per Regional)
-Regional Champions (3 per Regional)

  1. Open Registration in the Fall:

For 2004 and beyond, a select number of Championship spots each year will be available for open registration. These slots will be based on the number of years since a team last attended the Championship. All teams will be classified in a Tier (ie. Tier 6 equals six years since attending a Championship or last attended in 1998; Tier 2 equals two years since attending or attended in 2002). If the number of teams in a tier is greater than the number of available slots, FIRST will use a lottery system for teams within each tier to determine eligibility for the remaining open slots. The final determination will be first come/first serve until all available openings are filled. A wait list will be maintained for any openings that become available after the close of registration. Typically 10 to 15 openings occur during the Competition season.

Teams can access the year they last attended the Championship in the Team Information and Management System used for registration. Teams that are qualified to register will have access to Championship registration starting noon Eastern time on October 22, 2003. The year each team last attended the Championship is part of TIMS and your team should verify that information prior to the opening of Championship registration.

This coming year FIRST will change the rookie awards to include a Rookie Inspiration Award for outstanding effort as a FIRST team in community outreach and recruiting students to engineering, a Highest Rookie Seed Award and the Rookie All-Star Award which recognizes overall excellence and success in building a quality robot and a sustainable team of Chairman’s Award caliber. This last award will qualify rookies to attend the Championship. As announced on September 26th, rookies will not be eligible for the Chairman’s Award since that award recognizes sustained excellence over several years. Rookies are, however, encouraged to develop a Chairman’s Award submission which will be used as a criteria to judge the Rookie All-Star Award. This submission will document where your team started its FIRST journey and provide background for documenting the results of your team’s efforts. Teams applying for NASA grants should be aware that a copy of this submission must be provided to NASA as part of the grant.

We hope this system encourages all teams to take advantage of the opportunity to attend the Championship at some point in the future. Additional information on the Point System and the Tiered System is available below.

Bob Hammond
Director, Robotics Competition


Point Qualification System
Teams may qualify through performance during the prior year (2003) based on the points earned. Five (5) points are required to register.

a. Championship Event winner 3 points
b. Championship Divisional winner 3 points
c. Regional Event winner 3 points

d. Regional Chairman’s Award winner 3 points
e. Championship Event finalist 2 points
f. Championship Divisional finalist 2 points
g. Regional Event finalist 2 points
h. FIRST Judged Award winner at Regional or Championship 2 points

Tiered System
Tier 1 last attended Championship in 2003
Tier 2 last attended Championship in 2002
Tier 3 last attended Championship in 2001
Tier 4 last attended Championship in 2000
Tier 5 last attended Championship in 1999
Tier 6 last attended Championship in 1998 or earlier "

~Mike

What tier are you if your team has never attended the Championship? We are a fourth year team and have never been.

i will agree with the above reply, except that if you were a 4th year team, they may judge whether or not you COULD have gone (obviously you could have due to the even/odd system of years past). my question is, what about the even numbered rookie teams from last year? we never even got a “free” chance to goto nat’s…

or maybe the system just doesn’t make sense to me?

i’m really glad that they implemented something like this…i went to nat’s with 442 two years ago and it was packed! i hope this thins things out a bit! :slight_smile:

Wow. I really like this solution. It makes a lot of sense. However, I feel shot down. All us even teams (my former 1020 and my current 246 for instance) had the conviction that they would have a free ride to the big event, like Jeremy pointed out. I can’t help but feel left out, but at least I know that we’ll get there in a few years if we don’t qualify somehow else.

I can’t help but wonder though… Is this a real long term solution? This year’s rookie teams will flood in and when they reach the top tier, along with other teams that haven’t been in a long time, there will be too many teams and not enough spots for them. Of course, they can just hold them off and have a small group of left out 7th or 8th tier teams that will get peference the next year. However, that fills up a few more spaces making an echo in the system, causing a 9th and 10th and so on. I like this idea, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t help worrying about the road ahead. Will we be on CD in a 4 or 5 years creating a swarm of discussion about how the system needs to be revised again?

As for the teams that haven’t been yet, I’d assume that they just count up years of participation, right? Makes sense to me, but we’ll have to have them clarify this for us.

*Originally posted by sanddrag *
**What tier are you if your team has never attended the Championship? We are a fourth year team and have never been. **

It reads as the last time you attended. It appears that if you have never been, you are Tier 6.

Wetzel

I feel update #1 comming soon.

That would be interesting. That would mean then that all rookies get preference? If that’s true, I’m amazed and unsure if I’m happy or upset.

BTW, did anyone notice that we’ve got info about the new game already?

“-Regional Champions (3 per Regional)”

That means we’ve got an alliance 2x2 game again. I suppose it could be 2x2x2, but like others argued, it’s not likely because of the field and such.

I hope thats the case. Our team was Rookie All Star las t year but only managed to get 4 points. If we are only in Tier 2 it might be forever before we get to Nats… (Yeah I know we could just win and that wouldnt be a problem.)

It would make sense to me that if Rookie All Star is emphasized this coming year it should be made 3 points instead of 2. Sigh.

<edit>
Overall, however, I think that this will be a good system in the long run. Thanks to FIRST for all the time and effort they put in to coming up with the plan.
</edit>

What do you think? Is it right that teams that can attend more than 1 regional have a much better chance of attending Championships.

*Originally posted by Jay Lundy *
**Either buy something or do it all autonomously. **
I had thought of this before but hadn’t really looked into it. We may have uncovered something here. Perhaps this year’s game will have significantly more autonomous play. C’mon, the new faster more capable, more program space controller, no edu OI system provided. Hrrm, looks suspicious to me.

Perhaps the scoring is not as dependent on driver control, that’s why they didn’t give any. Hey come to think of it, there are no joysticks being provided either. There mus be more to this than just cutting costs.

OK, so if any team that has never gone to a championship is always the highest tier, how could this new system possibly work??
If FIRST grows as they want it to:

  1. it won’t be long before there are over a thousand teams that have never gone and are all fighting for less than 50 spots
  2. the number of regionals will continue to go up and if they take 6 teams from each regional, there will not be many spots left for the tiered teams anyway!

Raul

As far as i know, there will only be 26 rookie teams eligible for the Championship Event this year. These 26 teams will be the Rookie-All Stars.

If you are a Rookie team, you at basically at Tier 0.

Basically you don’t get a head of the line pass for being a rookie, when you become a rookie you get to stand at the end of the line, and your year counter starts.

It’s also good to keep in perspective, just because FIRST is growing doesn’t mean every team can afford or want to goto the championship.

With more regional competitions, it may be of more value to a team to do 2 regionals instead of 1 regional and the championship.

Keep in mind that the championship registration did not fill out immediately last year even though hundreds of odd teams qualified.

Regional Champions (3 per Regional)

Well at least we get a hint that the game will still be 2v2 w/ 3 on an alliance :stuck_out_tongue:

*Originally posted by Ricky Q. *
**Well at least we get a hint that the game will still be 2v2 w/ 3 on an alliance :stuck_out_tongue: **

I think thats what they think you will think, therefor you are thinking what they want you to think.

Wetzel

I think.

Man… that really would have been nice to have had in place last year. For the reasons skyman has stated…

Ok, am i the only one a little confused by the “merit based qualifying”?

“Teams that are qualified to register will have access to Championship registration starting noon Eastern time on October 22, 2003” Now does that mean teams that qualify under the “merit based system” qualify by the previous seasons performance?

although it says “Merit Based Qualifying Teams from the 2004 season”, how can u qualify from the 2004 season if registration closes before the season even starts

Could someone please clarify this part of the eligibility requirements for me?:confused:

I think FIRST has done an EXCELLENT job with the new system.

I didn’t think it would be possible, but they managed to come up with a solution that fulfills all the “meta-criteria” discussed by teams.

They spelled it right out for us at the beggining of Bob’s message.

The main criteria they used were the same as OUR criteria that we communicated to them. We want the championship to be as competitive as possible, while still allowing for everyone to get a chance to go eventually.

Given the rate FIRST is growing, and restrictions on the size of The Championship, I think the tiered system is about as fair as they could get. I’m also a big fan of the “rookie all-star” being a qualifying award. Something everyone emphasized was “rookies should get to experience The Championship”. This rule allows for the best rookies to experience “the big show” while still keeping things competitive.

Sure with the tiered system it might take you 7 years to get a “free ride” to the championship, but at least you’ll get to go eventually

In the mean time… enjoy yourself at FIRST’s new (unconfirmed) “Mega-Regionals” and try to earn your trip down to The Championship.

I know there may be a few flaws with this system, but I think we should sit back and see how it actually works before we overly-criticize it. I believe FIRST has done a bang-up job in crafting this new system.

I’m also confident that FIRST will (again!) listen to team’s comments/concerns about the system (as we see them this year), when they are looking at 2005.

Let’s give this system a chance.
I think it will be GREAT for FIRST in the long term.
It will certainly bridge the gap between now and any “Regional Championship” system they might implement in the future.

Just my comments…
John

(If nothing else, this will light a fire under the butts of those veteran teams as they scramble to qualify… should be a fun and competitive season :slight_smile: I know I’m going to tell my guys… “We either put up, or shut up!” :wink: ).

Unless I am not reading something I think that this system really sucks. First I have to say that the only reason why I still work with first and promote it is because of it’s ethics and gracious professionalism. Now with that said what is the point of a national champion with out the best robots there. I DO NOT WANT A SINCE FAIR. If you want to be the best you have to beat the best.

Shaun

Everyone: I’m sorry if I accidentally advocated a rumor. There’s a little ambiguous point in where rookie teams stand as well as those who’ve never been. The best way to figure this out is to look in the team information system. I would think that they are doing as Patrick pointed out.

I think this will work and I’m glad they came up with something, so I agree with John that we should be thankful and ride this out for a while to see how it works. The larger problem still lurks in the distance though.

Shaun: This isn’t turning into a science fair. The best teams still get to go. If you read the opening it says “Outstanding team performance or outstanding robot performance is the ticket.” They are bringing in the best robots from all the regionals: the engineering inspiration, the rookie all-stars, and the regional champs. On top of that they’re bringing back the champs from the previous year! And this year you can still qualify by the points system. What more do you want?

I did not see where reagion winner go the only thing i see is national winner get to return

*Originally posted by computhief263 *
**Ok, am i the only one a little confused by the “merit based qualifying”?

“Teams that are qualified to register will have access to Championship registration starting noon Eastern time on October 22, 2003” Now does that mean teams that qualify under the “merit based system” qualify by the previous seasons performance?

although it says “Merit Based Qualifying Teams from the 2004 season”, how can u qualify from the 2004 season if registration closes before the season even starts

Could someone please clarify this part of the eligibility requirements for me?:confused: **

Teams that can register on 10/22 are:

All prior Championship Chairman’s Award winners
Original and sustaining teams from 1992
2003 Championship “Stack Attack” winners
2003 Point qualifiers based on the previous 5 point or more system

And I’m not really clear on how they are registering with the Tier system, I think it is that X spots will be open for Tier 6, X for 5 and so on…Don’t quote me on it though. Obviously Tier 6 will have many more spots than Tier 1

Teams that qualify at 2004 events will register through FIRST the Monday following their event if they are going to go, they get to work out all the fun logistics such as paying the entry fee, shipping, travel and all that fun stuff.

Hope that helps.