One rule that people may not have noticed from the new manual is <G3>:
Previously this rule was:
It has been pretty common this season and in previous seasons for coaches to coach multiple teams from the same school or club, or for drivers to act as coaches for other teams. This is especially true at Worlds for teams who have to pay a lot to travel to Anaheim.
Personally I think this rule is unnecessarily restrictive. This rule will force teams whose travel costs are significant to choose between not having coaches, or sending fewer teams.
It’s understandable that VEX and RECF want to encourage more students to get involved as drive team members. A reasonable compromise might be to use the current Skyrise rule for most events but keep the Toss UP rule for large events that require teams to travel such as Worlds, Asia Pacific and US Nationals.
A “Drive Team Member” only means that they are allowed to touch the controls. If they do not ever touch the controls, they would be just like a “coach” from any other year.
EDIT: Scratch that. Just realized that other than “Student Drive Team Members”, the only other definition of someone allowed at the field is “Adult”, which is defined as “Anyone not meeting the definition of Student.” So you are correct.
This is a great rule. It was always kind of implicit in the fact that if you had only one coach for two teams, then there would be a problem if those two teams had to play against each other.
More fundamentally, however it gives further clarification as to the what a robot team is and states that while you are welcome to cheer for as many teams as you like you can only play for one of them.
I disagree. We have gone to events where we have 5 robots and 12 people. The 10 people will always drive the same robots and for coaching we have one of the other 2 do it or a driver. It is not rare for us say we need a coach for this match and one driver will come.
This rule would make it so that 3 of our teams would not have coaches. And to with the tower pieces having to be placed in one of our drivers would have to stop driving and do it.
This rule moves things in a direction I really like (I hesitate to say the “right” direction, because I know others will disagree). When teams are bigger, and fewer teams (but the same number of students) from a single institution advance, it allows more institutions to take part in Championship events, expanding exposure and inspiration.
For example, if 12 members form 4 teams instead of 5, that opens up a space for another team.
While distant institutions may need to send fewer teams, that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer members. Serving the same number of students/mentors with fewer robots means less cost in registration fees and shipping costs.
At its peak, our institution had 10 members on 2 teams. When one advanced, the other team’s members were invited to attend Worlds as “supporting members” if they could raise the funds – they served as pit crew, inventory/parts maintenance, and performed other useful team roles, like hunting/gathering food. Twelve people (including parents) crowded around a single pit table was cozy, but our ratio of people served to space/field time was higher than most. Twelve people all had the time of their lives, even though we ranked low.
We’re very much advocates of the philosophy of “serve more people with the same resources.”
So you are correct.