My fellow mentor\coach and I were curious to know how the EDR platform works in Indiana. Currently we run 2 IQ teams, ES & MS, but we’re looking at some of our 8th graders who might be headed to a school WITHOUT a competition team and were considering getting an EDR going with them. Does EDR split the MS and HS competition up OR can a MS and HS team be blended together? Thanks in advance for advice and guidance.
Middle School and High School do generally have split competitions (and world championships), however you can definitely have a team of middle school students and high school students. They would just be competing at the high school level. If I remember correctly, most tournaments in Indiana have a blend of middle school and high school teams anyway.
For the last few years, every qualifying tournament in Indiana has been blended and this will be the very first year the middle school and high school will have separate tournaments for state championships.
Middle school students can be on a high school team, but not the other way around. What this means is that if a team has any high school students on the team, they are a high school team but if they are all middle school students, they can be either a middle school team or a high school team.
Our organization has both and sometimes some of our middle school students are on the high school team.
I hope this helps.
Thank you for your answers. So just to clarify. This year Indiana will be running an EDR middle school only(assuming just MS kiddos) and a high school only? In your format blatwell it’s almost like a JV and Varsity scenario. I would have to stress the time commitment to the kids if we would pursue that; I’m always competing with sports of some sort. We’ll have to play this by ear and see what we can come up with. Thanks again.
Ok here is what I’m adding to the conversation:
Indiana will have two separate State Championship tournaments (on the same day, in the same location). One will be for HS teams, and one for MS.
Not necessarily. There are not many (if any) middle school teams in Indiana who “play up” to high school. They mostly all stay within their classification. There are many middle school teams who are competitive with the high school teams in Indiana. It’s not really like JV/Varsity, but it is like sports…you can “play up” as a middle schooler, but you can’t “play down” as a high schooler.
Time commitment is the number 1 issue in robotics. The more time you put in, the better your team will do. That’s (almost) always accurate.
If you need any help or want any additional information, feel free to reach out to others within the Indiana VEX Robotics community! There are some great people who are always willing to help when asked (@blatwell, @Powerbelly, @TheColdedge are all great examples of Indiana mentors and they are pretty active on the forums). Also, I’m a student so I may not be as wise/experienced as others, but feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I can be kind of helpful from time to time :).