hi,
I am starting a new vex iq team that all team members are elementary school students. for the qualifying events, are we only competing against elementary school teams or may compete middle school teams? our team is in new york state, I can only find very few elementary school teams in last year qualifying event. another question is if the qualifying event is always by state.
thanks.
Most of the tournaments in South Texas are mixed elementary and middle schools together. States was separated. Not sure about NY, but you’d have to have a bunch of teams to separate them for the individual tournaments.
In Delaware, where possible we try to do MS vs MS / Elementary vs Elementary. Some events don’t get enough robots to do that, so they get mixed up. DE states 2018 will be separate.
Don’t assume the middle school robot will win, I’ve seen some amazing elementary robots and roboteers.
Personally I think the benefit to new elementary teams of competing against stronger/more mature competition outweighs any benefits of competing against people their own age/skill level. Because of competing against strong competition I know a number of Elementary teams that can beat just about any Middle School team. The highest scores in last year’s game were put up by Elementary School alliances.
This is one of the hardest things to educate parents about.
thanks gor all replies!