The 2016 MSHSL rankings are inand here are the 30 teams qualified to go to MSHSL Champs:
2052*
2220*
2526*
4607*
4009
2883
2502
2987
5172
5690
2512
6175
2501
5434
3277
2823
2538
5232
2530
4539
2503
3042
3276
3082
1816
4778
4656
4624
2855
3102
*Team automatically qualified with a Chairman's Award win.
No team that attended Iowa for their first event qualified…
Congrats to 2823 and 2855 for making it, and I wish you good luck representing St. Paul.
Despite the unfortunate absences of 2175 and defending state champion 3130, who won North Star together last weekend and certainly are two of the top teams in the state, I’ll be making the short trip over to Minneapolis to watch, as this competition is still full of great robots and should be very competitive.
No, you’re right Caleb. 1816’s first event was Lake Superior…
The list seems incomplete without 2175 and 3130. 
Thank you. It means a great deal to us to be able to go to MN Champs this year.
Also, 3130 is ranked #32, so they probably will make it in replacing a team that is unable to attend.
How soon until someone from outside Minnesota chimes in that if Minnesota had districts they would have made it? 
(I’m kidding. Let’s please not make another thread about Minnesota going to districts).
While it is great that we will be attending this for the first time, it is a shame that our alliance partners 2175 and 3130 from North Star will not be there as they both built some of the best robots in the state this year and clearly deserve to be there.
Bogus and way too early predictions anyone? (Assuming all invited teams attend)
I feel like I may have jinxed my team when i posted this during build season…
Good luck to all the teams going, it always ends up being a good event despite some of the best teams in the state not attending each year.
This really needs to be fixed, 2175 and 3130 both deserve to go. This happens every year, and it’s time to fix it. We can’t call it a state championship if it doesn’t have the best teams in the state.
2169 congratulates all the teams that qualified for the state championship! Minnesota had some great bots this year, some of which are sadly unrepresented (especially 3130 and 2175).
I actually found it quite comical seeing our placing.
“KING TeC close”
How do you propose fixing it?
The teams invited are invited using the same formula that districts use to select who’s invited to district championships. The formula applies to the first event only. Giving teams the best of multiple events is prima facie unfair to teams that can only afford one event.
As it is, winning Chairman’s at any event is an automatic in.
I’d love to see 2175 and 3130 at the state championships but that’s not the way the rules are written.
You want heartbreaking, 2169 is the first team not selected and they lost on the 4th tiebreaker.
Take the average of both events. The goal of the state championship should be to find the best teams in the state… IRI doesn’t only take into consideration your first event because the goal is to find the best teams. You can’t call it a state championship if the goal isn’t to find the best teams in the state.
Take an average of the first 2 events a team attends. Not every team goes to 2 events, but those that do should be rewarded for their hard work. In order to go to two events, you need money. To get this you work hard to raise funds. Every team in the state can work hard. Can every team raise enough money for 2 events? No, but a large majority can. The teams that go to 2 events generally have more time put into the program on average. Obviously there are exceptions with 4778 being one of them. I think this dedication to FIRST should be rewarded as well.
I would also say teams should be rewarded for the time they spend iterating and improving their robots between events. Diagnosing problems, fixing them and having a better performance and the field as a result is an amazing thing. These teams put in a lot of time and work and money into this improvement, not to mention blood, sweat, and tears.
If you’re worried about not all teams being able to do 2 events, then take the teams single event and double the score while taking others teams’ 2 events. Or simply take an average of 2 events that teams do, same thing.
This system rewards hard work without eliminating teams that can only do 1 regional from being able to compete. The top robots need to be there if we’re going to call it a championship event, and this will correct for that without over-correcting.
This is false. Among other things, the district formula does not have the potential to award 10 points to teams who spend 15 minutes writing an essay they don’t care about.
I’m open for recommendations on how to fix it - any you send me will be presented to the rest of the RPC. We’ve looked at it from every angle we can think of, analyzing what the changes would be if we counted second events (as an average with the first event), analyzing the differences between teams that earn a spot at States versus those that earn a spot at Champs… We haven’t found a better way that’s fair to every team.
Counting a second event simply gives an unfair advantage to those teams that can afford more events. And for the record, that’s 42 teams out of 208 this year - 20%. Allowing those 20% to count their second event gives them a benefit over the other 80% of teams in the state. This is the same decision that was made in districts - there, they count a team’s first two events, because every team gets two events. If you sign up for a third? Well, that’s some more practice and experience for you, but it doesn’t count towards your ranking.
2175 and 3130 did really well at North Star, it was fun watching them play. But that was their second event. It’s tough, but that’s the only fair way we’ve found to make it work.
I agree, if you spend 15 minutes on your Chairman’s essay/presentation/video no one will care about it. Or at least no one will care for it.
Another interesting question relating to the state qualification system is should Chairman’s team qualify automatically? The fact that my team qualified via CA and wouldn’t have otherwise doesn’t change my opinion on this topic, because I haven’t formed an opinion as of yet. I’ve heard good arguments from people on both sides. Those arguments always boil down to:
If you qualify CA winners, you have to have some kind of overall CA award or recognition, something. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be MSHSL sponsored which would obviously be ideal.
If you have no such award/recognition, why qualify the teams?
Obviously the Chairman’s Award is the most significant in FIRST, but should that mean they qualify to compete in a competition designed to determine the best robots? It does for champs, but they compete to become Hall of Fame teams there.
I’d love to see something done with CA at the state championship, even if it isn’t MSHSL sponsored.
I’m very much on the fence about this issue. I really wouldn’t mind whether or not a second event is factored in, but I really like defense Jon provides here.
One of the arguments for counting a second regional is that it rewards teams that took the time to improve their bot. But doesn’t that still inherintely and indirectly hurt teams that can only afford one event? This improvement ideology still hinges on the fact that teams with more money are given an advantage. We’d be fooling ourselves if we thought teams that can’t currently afford two regionals do not want to improve their robot. Factoring in a second regional rewards the opportunity to improve the bot, not the actual action of doing so. Every team would strive to improve their robot for their second regional if they could afford it. Sometimes the opposite happens (our first day at North Star this year for example, and us in 2008), but regardless, factoring in a second regional is more of a reward for the opportunity to improve the robot rather than a reward for the drive and motivation of doing so.