This year’s VRC Qualifying Criteria came out today, and while most of it is the same as last year, there are also a few notable changes:
Events with more than one division for the same grade level will have Best-of-3 for the finals between the divisions. (Like how the CREATE U.S. Open did it last year.)
If a team double-qualifies for Worlds, the extra spots will always go to another team (who hasn’t qualified yet), even if the second qualification is through an Online Challenge. (I haven’t confirmed whether this also applies to teams who qualified through another team’s double-qualification and then qualified in their own right, but I assume it would.)
It sounds like all events this year will have exactly three Skills attempts of each type (3 Driver, 3 Programming), just lIke Worlds and many other events do already. (Leagues will be allowed to have up to three attempts of each type per day, however, which would add up to more than three of each overall.)
It sounds like if a team outside the US qualifies for Worlds but can’t go, the spot will go to another team in that region, usually the one with the next best Skills score. (The region decides who.) In the US, the number of spots has already been inflated to account for teams who can’t go, so if there are any spots left, they will just go to teams on the waitlist (who I’m guessing will need to be teams who have already competed this season, unlike how it was last year). That makes sense, since the teams who could go to Worlds on short notice would be American teams.
It is explicitly stated that you are allowed to have people from other teams join yours for Worlds to help out, but the drive team members have to be the ones from your own team.
It is explicitly pointed out that if a team gets a Skills score at an event outside their region, that score counts for them on the World Skills Rankings. This was already true, but now it’s stated directly in the Qualifying Criteria.
[Edit - This was the case last year, too:] Events can have fewer than 6 organizations registered, or have more than 33% be from the same school, they just can’t have both. (Different schools should be different organizations and have different team numbers, even if they are part of the sme district, but multiple team numbers for the same school is still just one organization.)
The Qualifying Criteria PDF doesn’t include the spot allocations for Worlds yet. It will be updated in August (I assume that’s when the spot allocations will be added), and again on January 15th to add the bonus spots (and potentially add awards to the list of awards that can qualify you for States/Worlds).
it says on the qualifying criteria : " Spots to VEX Worlds 2020 from VEX Worlds 2019
These spots have already been won and teams will be invited to register to VEX Worlds 2019 in the Fall
when the VEX World registration page opens on RobotEvents.com
All Excellence Award winners – This is a program level award. The REC Foundation will
contact the primary contact for the team to see which one (1) of the teams in their program they
choose to be invited.
All Tournament Champions – The two (2) teams on each winning alliance, two (2) from middle
school, and two (2) from high school.
All Robot Skills Champions – The first-place team from middle school and the first place team
from high school."
What does this exactly mean? Does it mean all the tournament champions of states or regionals or worlds will get a spot? I’m a bit confused
I’m pretty sure those awards from 2019 Worlds will qualify said teams for 2020 Worlds. For example, 2011C, the flagship for World Excellence Award winning 2011 Brecksville Robotics organization will be invited to register their team for 2020 Worlds when spots begin to open up.
Edit: To clarify, 2011 would not have to send 2011C. I just assumed they would choose them because, as stated, 2011C is kind of their flagship team.
In this case, “All” just means all the ones at Worlds, not all the ones across the whole season.
Based on what you quoted, it sounds like the organization who won Excellence will get to choose which one of their teams to send to Worlds.
So 2011 could sign up any one of their teams to Worlds (they don’t have to choose 2011C), but only one of them can sign up through winning Excellence at (2019) Worlds. (The others would have to qualify on their own.)
(This is the one thing where @Got_a_Screw_Loose was mistaken. This may be a new rule this year, though, and I didn’t notice the change myself until now.)
I would also guess that if a team qualifies through winning last year’s Worlds and qualifies again through winning something this year, the spots they get this year would go to another team, the same as if they double-qualified through events (or Online Challenges) this year.
Details on how that works
If a team wins a Worlds spot at Signature Event after already qualifying for Worlds, the spot would go to the next best Skills score at that event. If they win a spot at States, the spot would go to the next best Skills score in the state. If they win an Online Challenge, it would go to the 2nd-place team for the Online Challenge.
This is the same as last year… They get rid of the old docs pretty quickly, so it is tough to remember it all. but I have a pretty big organization, so I ran up against this one a couple of times.
(Like how the CREATE U.S. Open did it last year.)