The 25/26 Qualifying Critieria has been released.
VEX Robotics World Championship spots will be released on the August 1st update.
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Thanks RECF for the hard work every year of iterating on these rules.
Iām disappointed to see that no changes have been made to the Event Region Championship Double Qualification Process. Specifically, additional spots still trickle down directly to the Robot Skills list.
This may be a ānicheā concern for most Regions, but not here on the West Coast.
I propose that additional spots should go down the Competition Spot Allocation sequence (Appendix A), which includes Robot Skills Champion.
Under this proposal, if, say, a Teamwork winner double-qualifies, their spot trickles down to Design > Innovate > Create > Robot Skills Champion, and maybe then down into Robot Skills #2, #3 and so on.
Why? Because the current double-qual algorithm heavily favors teams that are unable to impress the judges at a Regional, but yet have robots, drivers and autonomous that can dominate the scores at the event. This heavily incentivizes teams and mentors to optimize solely for skills, which correlates with Teamwork performance as well. Most of these teams can skip the notebook and waive the interview, and theyāll still get invited to Worlds because G2 violations are very difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt.
Maybe this is the intent of this policy.
In our region, for example, we end up with teams that win Worlds spots at Signatures, then come back home to win Teamwork at Regional. Often paired with a sister team driving an identical robot in that final match (multiple seasons). That triggers double-qualification into the Robot Skills list, which is also filled at the top with other teams from the same organization, none of whom qualified for a judged award.
Itās pretty disheartening for the kids to see, āthat team already got a Worlds spotā¦oh wait, that spot now goes to another team of theirs.ā
Iām mostly familiar with IQ, so there may be implications in VRC Iām unaware of. VRC doesnāt seem to be quite as plagued by ācopy botā and āmentor botā organizations, which motivates some of this suggestion. This proposal would improve incentives for teams to be more G2 observant, and bring novel ideas to the Championships.
BTW, it seems that VEXU and VEX AI rules do have double-qualifiers trickle āto the next spot on the qualifying award chartā. So thereās already some precedent to this proposal.
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Iām curious, what is really the difference between an Invitational and School-based Event?
An EP can only host those after having hosted an Open Event. We can host (1) Invitational and (2) School-based, so I suppose thatās one difference. The School-based just seems like a more restrictive Invitational. Wouldnāt the same thing have been achieved by just saying EPs can host (2) Invitationals (or 3)? If the EP wants a school-based event, an Invitational can allow that, while allowing some more flexibility.
For example, we have a number of private parent-coached garage teams where every team member is a student of the school - they simply chose for a variety of reasonable reasons to āgo privateā, especially since the cost of registration is now the same for private or school teams (unless waivers are grandfathered in for teams > 6). They wouldnāt qualify for a School-based event, and it sounds like the EP wouldnāt have any latitude to invite them.
If this is an attempt to help solve issues around school teams competing with for-profit organizations, I think thatās directionally laudable, but Iād question the efficacy since Invitationals already allow EPs to host āschool eventsā but with greater freedoms.
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and that is the need for School based organizations - where the work is done in school as part of the school organization. Invitationals EPs would have to cherry pick the teams from schools and you run into issues ābut I work in my garage because my I donāt like my club mates and the school will not give us the budget we deserveā¦ā
I think this approach of solidly documenting who are directly affiliated with an accredited school is a huge first step. I look forward to seeing how it goes this season and the Conference model pilot with IQ.
Thanks RECF for rolling this out.
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I just noticed the new school-based event. Weāre a private VRC team. The middle school all of the team attends does not have a robotics team. However, our larger county school system has a lot of teams and hosts several tournaments a year. Weāre left out of all of the invitational events. Iām guessing now the county will move to hosting more āschool-basedā events that weāll also be left out of. Last year, these were most of the middle-school only events in the area, so we were left with mostly attending blended events (as a middle school teamā¦) The invitational events also had a decent number of qualifying spots for the state event, which once again, we couldnāt compete for.
While I get that RECF wants to support school-based teams and discourage the big for-profit private organizations, but there are teams likes ours who donāt have the option of joining a school team.
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Actually, RECF goes out of its way to support all types of organizations. Do note EP that host āinvitationalā must host another open event of equal size or bigger. Ditto for School based events - EPs must host an open event.
What private teams may wish to do is to get together and host league events. They require less resources to run.
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Two thoughts: (1) the EP must host an Open Event first in order to host an Invitation (or School, now), so your team had access to that I hope, and (2) have you tried contacting the EP directly to request an Invitation? They certainly have the latitude to invite your team if youāre eligible based on the criteria they laid out.
Thatās my concern with School Events - maybe Iāve misread things, but it seems theyāre restrictive for the EP. So an EP canāt use her own discretion to decide if a team should (or even, should NOT?) be invited to participate. An EP can get all the benefits of a School Event via an Invitational, while maintaining freedoms to agree to invite teams like yours.
Yes, we had reached out and asked, but were told no - the invitational event was restricted to school teams only.
Not anymore, in Australia they are specifically cracking down on for-profit private organizations:
Academy Exclusion
Commercial or for-profit academy teams will no longer be eligible to register or participate in REC Foundation-sanctioned events unless approved under the new policy criteria outlined below.
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Thatās very interesting (RE: Australia).
Iāve seen that in many Regions, certain for-profit programs have had an outsized negative impact on REC events. There are also good organizations that are truly working to contribute to their communities and foster student-centered robotics. Unfortunately, Iāve had many students and coaches tell me theyāve quit robotics because of the disgust and anger over these organizations.
Iām glad Australia is trying to do something about it, though in my experience these groups will find a way in anyway.
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Sounds like they are more speaking to organizations that are Not Student-Centered, those that are student-centered may be approved.
Same in states - you need to be student-centered. Enforcement is difficult, but sounds like Australia is having opt-in Student Centered affirmation to participate for commercial or for-profit teams.
Lots of changes happening - one size fits all does not always work.
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Two ideas I just thought of, inspired by this post, would be:
- Give spots to teams who won an award at the event in order of their Skills score. (Maybe even include teams like the Judges Award winner if their Skills score was high enough to qualify on its own, or within the top X unqualified teams in Skills.)
- Give the double-qualification spots first to teams who won awards and are in the top X% of Skills scores at the event or the top X% of unqualified teams at the event, and then any remaining spots to the next-best teams in Skills overall. (Those teams might still be award-worthy depending on the region and competition: There are many teams in my V5RC region who won awards at several local events, but just werenāt the #1 choice for an award at Regionals. There was also a team in my region, 89250X, who won the Judges Award at Regionals, qualified for Worlds through the waitlist, and then went undefeated in their division at Worlds.)
If there are several middle-school-only events for school teams, but none that allow your team because youāre not part of the school your students attend, that might be something to talk to one or more EPās or to your Regional Support Manager about and see if someone can either host other events that alleviate it, or if someone can convince the hosts of the invitational/school-only events to allow teams like yours to attend at least some of their middle-school-only invitational events.
Sounds like youāre advocating making sure Skills are a factor in double-qualification, and I can buy into that idea. However, I think thatās a separate orthogonal suggestion.
What if Worlds Qualification just requires across the board that teams be in the Top 40% of Robot Skills at their Regional Championship (or internationally)? Even Waitlist.
So if Design and Innovate are qualifying awards in your Region, those winners only earn the Worlds spot if they meet the 40% threshold. Otherwise, the spot trickles down. That helps ensure that Worlds Qualified teams have a minimal performance bar. Put another way, they built a robot and drive team thatās actually somewhat effective.
But again, separately, Iād still advocate for double-qualification to work like VEX U and AI: go down the qualifying award chart, not the Robot Skills rank list, for reasons I stated earlier.