This was pointed out to me today, and I agree 100%. Let’s say you are a rookie team who has already done a lot of outreach. As the rubric says,
This team seems like a “Chairman’s Award team in the making.” (Community activities, leadership, vision, spirit, etc.)
You are attending a week 1 or 2 event this year, and then again week 6. If you win RAS at your first event, you have virtually no chance of advancing to Worlds and just go into the priority waitlist (which it seems likely you will not get pulled from). If you you win RAS at week 6 there is a far better chance you will get a wildcard since the wildcard slots go to:
the Winning Alliance 2nd pick,
Rookie All-Star Award Winner …
and many teams will be playing their 2nd/3rd/4th regional at this point in the season.
What’s the big “gotcha”? Well, if you win at your first event, then you are no longer eligible for RAS at a later event, even if you are far and away the best candidate to win it. This seems like it was overlooked when this year’s advancement rules were created, and I hope something can be done to help out those teams who did such a good job that they won RAS at an early event but might lose out on advancement to a lesser team at a later event just because they are not eligible and the other team was.
Hmm, that’s really interesting because that’s not what the rules say but it would be nice if so (and if the judges at the events know this). It looks like they got in off the priority waitlist, too, and not as a wildcard.
I have to double check, but I’m 85% sure this shouldn’t be allowed. This might be a mistake on the JA’s part, who might not have known that you can’t win twice, or (more likely) didn’t know they had already won the award at another event. San Diego was pretty early in the season and most rookies don’t go to two events, so they might not have thought to check.
Or, another possibility is that this team was so much better than the other rookies that the judges decided they just had to give it to them despite the rules.
Edit: checked. It isn’t allowed. RAS follows the same eligibility rules as CA and EI
Yeah, that’s the part that’s really unfair to the rookies this year. RCA and EI get automatic bids but if you are an early-season RAS winner then you have a much much smaller chance of advancement than if you won later in the season. I know some rookies in this situation and they should be allowed to win it (or at least compete for it) more than once this year.
Perhaps FIRST can give RAS teams that didn’t qualify this year an invite for next years championship? I agree it is unfair (and hopefully just an oversight) but I don’t see FIRST retroactively changing rules and inviting teams this late into the season.
I think I know what happened here. At the time of the SDR, the official FRC record of HPR was incorrect, and did not list 8537 as having won the RAS (oddly, it had the team winning CA, which is why I noticed). The official record has since been corrected, but the JA probably wasn’t advised in time (I only noticed on Friday and alerted our RD then, did not know if others had at the time). Not to take anything away from 8537, but you are correct in that they should not have won RAS at San Diego.
