robotics as an official sport

FIRST General Forum
1

I have a couple of questions I have been meaning to ask for a long time and hope someone has the answer.

How many states recognize robotics as an official sport?
How many countries recognize robotics as an official sport?

What is the process to get robotics recognized as an official sport?

Thanks

Neil Palachuk
Cascade Bruin Robotics
FTC 6485/7342
Everett High School
FTC 9142
Everett Washington

2

sport
spôrt/
noun
noun: sport; plural noun: sports

1.
an activity involving **physical exertion** and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.
3

It’s not really necessary to define it as a sport or not, in this context. The goal, I think, is official recognition.

Minnesota has that - we’re officially recognized by the Minnesota State High School League, the organization that basically runs all of the interscholastic activities and sports in the state. You can see a summary of what they run here. As far as that goes, there seems to be two areas - sports and fine arts, and robotics is lumped in with sports.

And, as they say, “Minnesota is the first high school association in the country to host a state tournament in Robotics.”

4

Although these are official definitions, I believe people are starting to accept this definition except without the physical exertion part. Especially with the rise of e-sports, skill is really the part of the definition that a lot of people seem to care about recently. Perhaps they can just call it T-Sports(Technology Sports) to avoid upsetting people who stick by the dictionary definition.

5

Try other definitions, like

an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

I would argue that robotics requires quite a bit of skill, and the competition is obvious.

6

I think Arizona recognized Robotics as a sport as well.

7

I understand what the question is, a sport as defined by a school. I have questioned this as well. Defining the word “sport” doesn’t really fit in this area as it should be considered a state sanctioned activity. Academic Bowl (Quiz Bowl, whatever you call it), isn’t a sport, but generally it is state sanctioned just as debate team or chess team. The problem is that a state would have to officially choose a competition to go with. I know of area schools that are doing Vex because that is what the vocational organizations are doing.

I’ve considered trying to get Robotics as an official activity to letter in, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the battle.

8

The idea of pushing for robotics to become an official sport in Illinois was proposed to me and I had a few questions. These questions are serious:

Why do we want Robotics to be “recognized” as an official sport?
What is the benefit?
WHO are we wanting recognition from?
Are there any reasons we shouldn’t want to become an official sport?

Am I wrong to think another governing body is unnecessary for our sport? I feel like the sense of accomplishment I receive from helping my team would not be enhanced by being “recognized”

9

an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

The definition you provided has a similar problem.

10

Ask anyone who works on a robot in the pits fixing a robot that needs to be fielded in 10 minutes if they have physically exerted themselves. I have worked myself into a sweat several times at most regionals.

11

I should have started a new thread…

I don’t think the debate about whether robotics qualifies as a sport is as important as WHY we want to be recognized by a state.

Does anyone have an answer to this?

12

In MN, I can say that having the state tournament and recognition has several benefits:

  1. 30 teams have an additional one day “official” competition to attend-- far more MN teams “advancing” than the regionals in MN typically advance to CMP.
  2. It provides more ‘legitimacy’ to robotics in the high schools where traditional sports may have more clout.
  3. It legitimizes lettering for students
  4. It legitimizes excusing kids from school for competition
  5. It legitimizes the activity when describing the program to strangers to FIRST and competitive robotics.
13

I tracked my steps at a recent competition just for the heck of it and found that I walked 32.1 miles over the course of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ve helped fix things when we’re being constantly requeued and it breaks between semi-final matches – you’re definitely accurate about getting yourself into a sweat.

14

Thank you.

Has there been any downsides to becoming an official sport? The sponsorships and funding have not changed? Are there more rules you need to follow? Is FIRST the only official robotics competition?

15

I also wonder if someone in power makes money on this change. In Illinois, I’m sure the politicians/board members will find a way.

16

What about the teachers/coaches? Many schools basically ignored them previously… after recognition from the MSHSL, they tend to earn a similar stipend as coaches for other activities, or so I’ve heard. That, in turn, helps to increase team retention.

There haven’t been any downsides here - the MSHSL has worked very closely with the MN Regional Planning Committee from the start. Maybe the only additional rule is an additional Bag and Tag from the team’s last event (Regional/CMP) to the State CMP. It ensures the event is treated more like a regular event, than an off-season event - team’s don’t have all the time in the world to make changes to the robot before the event starts, they’re competing with the same robot they competed with at the regional.

17

For one team I’m familiar with, I think the funding from the school district was largely unchanged – mostly zero, other than teacher/coach stipends and use of shop. That’s just one data point.

Jon mentioned the bagging until the state tournament, which is probably the biggest pain. Bot stays in the bag until mid-May, other than for media events. Limits demo season a lot.

Students have to follow the MSHSL rules concerning drug use penalties, and other such things, and there may be some fees (minimal) as well. FIRST is the only high school state wide sanctioned robotics program, I believe.

18

That’s not completely necessarily true. Chess is an officially recognized sport by the International Olympic Committee. It is considered a Mind-Sport.

19

Is it Ok to have corporate sponsors for sports teams?
Is it ok to use your robotics team to recruit kids to your school?
What about finances? Do you need to report to the state sports association?

20

You are getting out of my area of expertise in this level of detail, but I’ve not heard of any of those things changing due to the high school league getting involved. But then I’m not aware of any explicit recruitment of traditional sports students to a particular school. For public schools, you go based on district boundaries, unless you can petition for a legitimate reason, for example, we have one older high school that is not as suitable for wheelchair bound students as the newer high school.

Also, my understanding for MN, is that other than student rules about drug use and the consequences and such, they pretty much stay out of all the operations and their main involvement is providing trophies and showing up to award them-- all the usual FIRST volunteers run the tournament for the most part. They basically said, that’s cool, we’ll add you to our literature and web site, and get standard state tournament trophies made up for you, but you run the tournament. The first year they charged admission to the event for the public, but haven’t since. Disclaimer: I have no direct first hand knowledge of this other than my team’s experiences and hearsay from some others closer to the ones in charge.