What if FIRST required one of the teams in an alliance to be a rookie team? It would be a great way to get new teams into the excitement of the finals and could really propel a new program!
I know I don’t have to ask for it, but others please share your thoughts…
I think it’s a good idea in theory, but there’s one major problem: there aren’t enough rookies. There were only 5 rookie teams at Rutgers and only 3 at SBPLI and that’s obviously not enough to have each alliance feature a rookie team. It would be great if you could come up with some solution to this, but otherwise there’s no way it would work.
Ummm worst possible rule ever. Lets see its like saying in your the last place team but hey you get to ride along with two veteran teams. This is detrimental because now that team is labeled a rookie team, and also that team will never receive credit for what its alliance accomplishes. I think by making teams pick certain teams that will kill the fun and excitement out of the elimination rounds.
At So Cal Regional rookies in the pit are mixed between vets. I don’t remember if they did that in Phoenix. It worked out great - we were interacting with both sides of rookies.
Our robot didn’t need mentor LeRoy’s attention so he got a list of the bottom 10 teams and helped them. We’re going to continue that as a tradition.
LeRoy helped a rookie team who hadn’t won a match win their next match. After that I’d learned they’d won another team’s “Worst Luck Award”. I took one of their rookie students, their award, and our “best control board” award and thanked the team giving out those awards. Who could have known those awards would be the impetus for our teams to begin to interact.
Then when we were up against the worst luck rookies I ran over to joke with them, “Be gentle”. :yikes: They won. I thought it was cuz the rookies hit us in the match. I think the rookies were a little unsure if we’d be upset (they asked what happened to our robot that had ‘died’). Instead we learned we hadn’t inspected our robot for unseen damage between matches and a loose screw caused the problem - a lesson for vets and rookies.
Our programming mentor Mark helped a dozen teams with programming.
A 2nd year team gave us a heads up that the rookies across from us in the pits didn’t know they had to be there Thu, were going to be late, and asked that we help them quickly get inspected. 3 teams helped those rookies quickly get their footing.
We learned some “hooks” in the stories of a few rookies, and had our team members learn the rookies stories, and be aware to not only tell judges and press our stories, but give a heads up about the rookies. Once a judge and press was going to check out a rookie team I’d mentioned and I ran to their pit to tell them. No one was there! I searched, found them, quickly told them, “Never leave your pit unattended, always have 2 students to talk to judges and press.” We’re going to make learning about rookies’ stories and helping them be prepared to talk to judges and press a tradition of ours too.
All of these were ways for our team to interact with rookies and make some great memories.
In addition to the above reasons, in my opinion that many rookies in a given year would cause FIRST to collapse.
Mixing vets and rookies in the pits is nice, but a pain for the Inspectors and Judges looking for a particular team.
Wetzel
Inspector at SVR and LA*Originally posted by Wetzel *
**Mixing vets and rookies in the pits is nice, but a pain for the Inspectors and Judges looking for a particular team.
**
can relate It was a pain for me trying to find teams I wanted to hook up with.
we had a hard enough time finding OUR pit at the beginning… ::sigh::
No, in order for that to work, there would have to be 50% rookies at every event, and plus, it would drag veteran team’s scores down: on average, rookies do not fare as well as veterans in matches.
Mixing the pit is fine, but I don’t think FIRST needs to be 100% geared toward inexperianced teams. I think veterans are more important.