What makes an all-star rookie team?

Competition Awards
21

Something to think about for all you rookies out there:

RAS and RI are effectively the rookie versions of the Chairman’s and Engineering Inspiration awards, respectively. As such, the descriptions of those awards should also be considered. Next year, they will be the awards you’ll be in contention for (hopefully). All quotes below are from Section 6 of the Administrative Manual–they’re either in the award grid or in the award description part (for the second Chairman’s quote).

Chairman’s: “The Chairman’s Award represents the spirit of FIRST. It honors the team that, in the judges’ estimation, best represents a model for other teams to emulate. It embodies the goals and mission of FIRST.”

“The Chairman’s Award was created to keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition as our ultimate goal for transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encourage more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists.”

Other stuff from the full Chairman’s description talks about partnerships and similar things. I’ll let you guys read that when you have time.

Engineering Inspiration: “This award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school as well as their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts.”

Note that the RAS and RI short descriptions are similar to the Chairman’s and EI descriptions.

One other note: FIRST is not FRC. A number of rookies may have come up from FTC, or even FLL, and have already had established partnerships and roots to help them compete and move up to FRC. They are still rookies, though.

FRC defines rookies as:

  1. Brand new team to FRC.
  2. Returning teams who last competed more than 3 years ago (option to be rookies or veterans)
  3. Any team resulting from a split/merger that satisfies 2) above.
  4. Mentors who have competed on other teams don’t make a team not a rookie team.
  5. If an otherwise-rookie team has more than 5 students who are veterans, they are not rookies.
  6. A team who does not meet the guidelines but successfully petitions for rookie status due to a special situation.
    (Paraphrased from http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=6632)
22

I’m not saying they aren’t rookie… but I am saying past exposure to US First gives them an advantage and that SHOULD be taken into account… I’m not going to sling mud here… both our teams are good teams… but I think the six other teams that gave us their internal awards speaks volumes about us and if we are worthy of other teams emulating us, not to mention it speaks volumes about what other teams thought of our getting the “FIRST culture, and embodying the goals and mission of FIRST”.

:slight_smile:

23

No these FRC teams are first rookies… but not FTC or FLL rookies… I’m talking about a team specifically with prior FRC experience…

24

Not to mention… and FLL, and FTC robot do not equate to an FRC robot… this year (being Rookies) we built both an FTC style (minibot) and an FRC robot… and they are VERY different animals… (yeah distant cousins)… but the scale alone not to mention adding pnumatics (which we did) and other more complicated systems…

25

LamBot 3478 tipped the scale for me at San Antonio.
http://www.teamlambot3478.com

They had more energy than I’ve ever seen from a rookie team !

I was truly blown away by their 50 person team and huge parent/mentor support.

26

Read what FIRST’s criteria are again. It’s perfectly legal to have prior FRC (FTC/FLL/JFLL/VEX Robotics Competition) experience, and they’re still rookies if they meet the FRC rookie guidelines.

Just for fun, let’s say that JVN (148), Karthik (1114), Cory (254), Andy Baker (45) and Paul Copioli (148/217) decide to start a new team somewhere. They rope in 5 experienced students from various teams. Let’s say that all 5 students have 3 years of experience. Those mentors all have at least 10 years apiece as mentors/students. They find 10 rookie students, and form a team now for 2012. 62+ combined FIRST seasons, 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

Still with the scenario, I manage to scrape up 4 rookie mentors and 15 rookie students. I’ve got 5 years as a team member, and something like 7 more hanging around FRC; nobody else has even seen a competition video at kickoff. Call it 12 seasons and 20 people. Is this team a rookie?

If I understand you correctly, you’d say the first one is not a rookie. I’m not sure you’d call the second one a rookie, because a veteran (me) is on it as a mentor, but for now we’ll call it a rookie, just for the sake of argument.

FIRST’s guidelines say that my team is a rookie (mentor status has no effect on a team’s status). Those guidelines also eliminate the mentors on the other team from consideration for rookie/veteran status for the same reason. They have 5 veteran students (the maximum number of veteran students allowed) and 10 rookie students; I have 15 rookies and no veteran students.

FIRST would say that both of our teams under consideration are rookies, according to their guidelines. Mentors don’t count, and both of us have enough rookie students to drown out any veteran students.

Now, would I want to go against that other team for rookie awards or on the field? Nope. There’s enough experience in both sides of the competition–on-field and off-field–that my team would probably get our behinds handed to us. But, under FIRST’s guidelines, both of us would be under consideration for RAS and RI and competing for Highest Rookie Seed. And I’m going to be encouraging my team to do their best to beat that team at their own game, without doing anything dirty. It’d be like a raw amateur beating Tiger Woods at golf (before the events of the last year or so), but darned if I’m not going to encourage the team to try!

One final thing: The concepts in FTC do translate over to FRC. Maybe the building doesn’t, but the concepts sure do. Anybody from 2753 want to come over and back me up on this?

(2753 was a really good FTC team–Team Overdrive–who moved up to FRC in 2009, and promptly cleaned up the New Jersey Regional, winning the event as the #1 seed and winning Rookie All-Star in the process. Oh, and beating out the perennial powerhouses at the event, teams 25 and 103. After another regional–I forget just how they did there–they became the first FRC rookie to set wheels on Einstein Field in I don’t know how long.)

27

Life is tough. You don’t always go to the Championship.

I couldn’t care less if my rookie team goes to the Championship or not, I don’t need a piece of plastic to qualify my hard work and the work of my team.

28

I’m not necessarily saying such a team isn’t a rookie team… I’m saying that such a team is not 100% rookie and that should be taken into account…

the amount of exposure a team has to US First before competing is clearly a factor, as those teams know more about what the judges are looking for and what US First is all about…

29

Our team doesn’t need anything to qualify our hard work as well… but when at least on face value it looks like decisions are being made on sponsorship $$$ versus merit… well that is contrary to US First values… it’s like the debate/question about some teams whose mentors do the bulk of the work and the first the kids really get to work with their robot is when they go to the regionals or simply get to drive the robot… Now if this really happens or not to be honest I’m not sure… I’ve seen things that sway my opinion in a certain direction… but I’ve also seen some mentors vehemently defend such things claiming “well it still gets kids excited about engineeringing and technology so, it’s perfectly in line with US First values”… To me… how you got there is JUST as important as getting there…

30

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now, so we’ll see if I’m coherent.

There is no such thing as a “not 100% rookie” team according to FIRST’s standards. You’re either a rookie or not a rookie. All rookies are eligible for rookie awards, which are judged at the event. There was a case a couple years back in MI where there was considerable debate over whether a particular rookie team was actually a rookie due to various factors (I don’t remember all of them, and I’m not sure I really want to go find that debate right now–it got rather heated). The long and the short of it was, they got RAS at least once despite having a few members who were veterans.

Whether or not experience should be taken into account is a much tougher call. How do you call, say, 2753 (FTC experience) versus, say, a heavily mentored rookie team (2809 comes to mind–lots of veteran mentors plus nearby teams) or a complete and total rookie? Some will have experience, but how do you account for it? Do you discount their RAS/RI-worthiness to account for that level of experience, however slight, thereby intentionally putting them at a disadvantage for those awards? Even with that disadvantage, there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll win.

As far as sponsorship money versus merit making decisions, I have only one thing to say: If you have actual evidence that sponsorship money was an actual factor in the decision, please present it now, ideally to the Regional Director and/or FRC HQ. Otherwise, don’t go there. Someone accused a team of bribery back in 2006. The resulting flame war/shouting match was, well… as one of the people involved in the thread (which has since been deleted), I don’t want to go there again. (The pattern was like this: “Show us the evidence.” “You know that it happened.” “Show us the evidence. Oh, and you’re not making sense because X, Y, & Z.” “You know it happened.” Repeat ad infinitum.)

By the way, when you bring up the mentor/student debate: If you should ever think a team is mentor-built, I would suggest that you spend some time with that team. You’ll be quite surprised at what you learn, I think. Of the number of teams that have been regularly accused of being mentor-built, very, very, very few (read: none that I know about) actually are.

31

The way the 3 rookie awards boils down in Michigan is

Highest rookie seed (obvious)

Rookie all star - The rookie that did the best in the eliminations. (except the last option rookie bots pick by #1) Waterford was a great example was a rookie bot that was in the #5 slot won it all.

Rookie inspiration- The rookie team that fits right in with the vets in terms of robot quality knowledge of first and its associated manners.

In Michigan districts the Rookie inspiration award is worth more in districts because the all star award doesn’t auto qualify for anything and isn’t worth any state ranking points. In contrast to the Rookie inspiration which is worth 2 points.

32

I won’t begin to imply that I understand the way things work for these awards, but I will give you some anecdotes of what we did to win 2006 Championship RAS.

1.) We had a business plan. We ran the team like a small business from day 1. We had a plan for 5-year sustainment, a branding image, colors, etc.
2.) We recruited industry partners, engineering & non-engineering mentors, and students.
3.) Our robot could move and spit out balls every now and then (2006 was poof balls), but it was a terrible contender to win the game. I don’t think we ever actually scored except for being up on the ramp at the end.
4.) We attempted autonomous. I think the bot even flipped 1 match.
5.) I think the only outreach we even had time to do at that point was showing the robot off at a pep rally, and demonstrating the robot to sponsors pre-ship.

There’s also a very interesting anecdote about how our leader wanted absolutely everything to be purple, including the notebooks that we left behind with the judges. She ran around Atlanta for 3 hours looking for the right hue of purple notebook, too. She’s an ex-CIO and understands that the team’s image has a large effect on its impact. To this day, we still have a large impact in our community because of such conviction to the program, including it’s image.

33

If you really meant that, we would not be having this conversation.

Judging at regionals is fair.

34

Performance should have a lot to do with it, but so does attitude, and spirit. At the Los Angeles regional this weekend my rookie team placed 34th out of 63. Not bad considering we had 12 students, all of whom knew little, or nothing, about robotics (especially FIRST robotics!) when the school year started.
Another rookie team placed in the top 10. They had a cohesive image, strong teamwork, and undoubtedly REALLY good mentors. They won the Rookie Inspiration award, and I feel they deserved it.
I think an all-star rookie team needs a group of motivated, focused, and committed students under the supervision of a dedicated mentor.