So last time I checked, there was 60 some teams that qualified for worlds this year. Minus the ones that were pre-qualified. Are the teams that were qualified this year going to get pre-qualified for worlds next year?
We’ll need to wait a few days (or maybe even weeks) for FIRST to finalize all of these details. Every answer here will be only a speculation.
11 Likes
I’d imagine that anyone who qualified this year, gets to go next year, and fewer wait listed teams get in to make up the difference. Probably 1/3 of teams already qualified are teams that are going to qualify again next year anyways, it likely won’t end up being that big of a deal to simply have them roll over their invite.
FIRST has bigger things to worry about with trying to get refunds to teams and get refunds from venues, I wouldn’t think this is a high priority for them to announce right now.
4 Likes
Good question, but way too early to ask.
13 Likes
This.
If I was in FIRST’s shoes, I’d pre-qualify said teams for next season. (Full disclosure: My team swiped a WildCard last weekend, as did our alliance partners. So I’m really interested!) But, I’m not.
If I was FIRST HQ, right now I’m focusing on making sure that HQ staff and volunteers are staying healthy, and organizing logistics of fields (getting them secured, mainly–I know the Del Mar/San Diego field was assembled and I’m pretty sure some teams were loaded in last night, before the announcement this morning). THEN, I’m looking at “is there a way to have some competitions this summer/fall, possibly a full season?” After that, I’d be aiming at next season’s Championships (partly because I need to figure out where they’ll be…)
7 Likes
I hope so. I would also like to see those teams that won Chairman’s at their Regional Competitions be able to compete for HoF/Finalist at the 2021 Champs.
If I were FIRST, I would:
- Add 100-200 slots to each Championship
- Remove the extra Wildcard slot from regionals and dynamically adjust District slots throughout the season based on how many teams are going to Championships
- Treat any team that qualified for the 2021 Championship in 2020 as a Waitlist team, meaning they don’t generate Wildcards the first time they qualify in 2021
Or:
- If a team qualified through winning an event or getting a Wildcard, they must play in at least one Playoff match to keep their spot. EI winners should be in consideration for the award to move on, all Chairman’s winners should move on as long as they submit an essay and present.
Hopefully that’ll prevent the 2021 championship from being overbooked once everyone’s competed in 2020. I realize it’s not a given that every event will run as intended after being postponed, but my hope is that nearly every team affected will get to play an official match this year.
It would be nice if they could declare both a 2020 and 2021 Chairman’s winner next year. Due to the nature of the award presentation and essay, it should be possible, but might be tough to judge based on the one presentation.
1 Like
We likely won’t know the answer to this until we know what will become of the 2020 season beyond suspension. It just doesn’t seem realistic to send everyone that qualifies over the next two seasons to a single season’s championship. However, it also doesn’t seem fair to give week 1-2 winners a qualification if weeks 3-7 eventually happen.
In general, if you have a question related to the current situation that wasn’t answered in FIRST’s release, they’re probably still working it out themselves.
2 Likes
Here’s some baseless speculation I’m hoping for.
- FRC 2020 resumes in the summer / fall.
- FRC 2021 starts in January
- One of the 2021 Championships plays the 2020 game and the other plays the 2021 game.
- Teams can attend the Championship they qualify for. If they qualify for both, they have to pick one.
I know it will never happen, but it would be really cool.
9 Likes
I love that plan. It seems like a good balance.
1 Like
This was the case in Orlando. Drive teams and coaches were on the field in the middle of the safety briefing when the announcement was made to suspend week 3 events, a little over 3 hours before practice matches were set to begin.
I am in agreement re Chairmans. I think it would also be a good thing to also give out a 2020 Woodie Flowers and Deans List at 2021 as well.
You can’t give out WFA and DLA for 2020.
OK, please explain why (I’m a noob at the FRC level).
Dean’s List has a regional component, so I understand that not really being possible, but WF is central, so it feels like that would be viable to still give out.
FTC Dean’s List Finalists have mostly already been decided, as well as a few FRC Dean’s List Finalists.
I’d think that the FRC interviews could be done remotely, as I’ve seen that done before in FTC. Heck, I’d volunteer as a Dean’s List judge and do remote interviews if it would help. Or even better - ask the previous Dean’s List winners to serve as judges and assign them to each of the postponed/canceled regionals/districts if the local organizers can’t get something together.
Then you could just go to the existing process to choose the Winners from all the Finalists.
Possible was probably more aggressive than I intended-- logistically more difficult is closer to my intent. With WFFA in particular, attaching it to a regional almost seems unnecessary.
So long as you announce (ideally to the team first but then also to the larger community) who the WFFA winner for each regional/district championship is, you could then feasibly decide on a 2020 WFA even if it’s not announced this year.
WFFA and WFA has the benefit of not being judged at the events, unlike most other awards.
On-topic, I thought on this a bit yesterday and came up with largely what Bobby proposed.
Fair enough - I agree on both counts.
Because you have less than 1/3 of the field for those awards.