The link for the Wednesday session of the 2017 EP Summit is here:
Afternoon session:
Cliff’s Notes from Day 2: (I’ll try to do a better job about taking things out of context this time Jason)
- having an arm that momentarily goes a little beyond 36" (repeatedly?) would be fine under the match affecting verbage
- sometimes ambiguity/vagueness in Q&A rulings is to try and help make the rules easier to enforce
- the busyness in getting into the worlds parking lot on saturday morning was a result of a mistake made by people managing the parking not opening enough gates and won’t happen again
- someone complained about the spotlights at worlds in freedom hall being blinding and asked if they could do something about that
- Someone asked them to make sure they don’t do ptc testing right before matches
- Someone asked them if they could make sure to keep team pits together even if it meant going out of order
- There weren’t any firm answers to the above 3 questions
- They really want separate elementary/ms/hs state champs
- The expect about half to 40 of the top 50 skills teams to have already qualified and that’s why skills spots don’t roll down for double qualifications. This way you know that you are in if you’re in the top 50 rather than not being sure if the spots will roll down to you through double quals
- They don’t use skills for the waitlist because they want teams that they know are able to go like local teams and the wait list is good for experienced teams. They will only take one team per org from the wait list and signing up early is important
- If you have a qualifying tournament you have to play under the tournament rules and judging guidelines
- VEX participation is at least 25% girls
What were their responses to both of these? If you wouldn’t mind sharing. Thanks for doing this by the way 
I don’t want anyone to get mad at me for not portraying their answers accurately, but as I remember it they just said things like yeah we’ll look into it and we understand that those are concerns. There wasn’t anything definite one way or the other like we don’t think this is a problem or yes we will do/will not do that next year.
What does this mean? They are already separate?
Ok, thanks
I think in some places they aren’t? Or just recently all states became separate and they are happy about that
I strongly agree with the complaints about the spotlights, btw. Perhaps they were worse in the upper levels, but everyone I sat with agreed they were obnoxious iirc.
Can concur. *Never again, * please. I was at a lower level for Student Ambassadors, and it was terrible (right next to the light), and it was almost as bad in the upper levels where I watched finals.
Our state had a separate Excellence award for MS, but MS and HS were blended and just the one champion alliance won state. Maybe that’s what they mean, helping ensure MS has their own championship.
Yeah that’s exactly what they mean
I’m curious what other people’s reaction to this is? I was pretty surprised as if I had to guess before hearing this I would have said around 15%. But that’s just based on my vague impressions from AZ comps and worlds.
AZ seems like it has fewer girls than other states. Although, our team is usually better than this 25% figure.
Between our 3 teams we had 33% last season, so also better than 25%.
I just got word Indiana would be hosting a separate MS state event, and word has come down requesting EPs to host MS only events.
Do you know how many MS teams there are in Indiana? I’ve never heard of enough to make a qualifying tournament unless there’s teams that don’t compete since it’s all against HS.
The email said 40
I am registering a 2nd MS team this year, we only had 1 in the past. Talking to another coach at worlds we only needed 10 more MS teams for their own state tourney. And one of the bigger schools in our county said they are switching to VRC from FRC for this school year, not sure if they are adding any MS teams though. Some of the IQ teams will hopefully be jumping up to VRC this year or next year, since most of them around here were 5th grade teams that got the grant last year.
That doesn’t seem like enough to populate regional tournaments, certainly not more than one. I mean, obviously if at least 24 go… But that seems unlikely.
We always have mixed regional tournaments, and separate State tournaments. Maybe it will be different in AZ this year.
I’m not calling the shots here, just reporting.