I think this goes without saying. We are trying to help as many teams as we can and provide as many opportunities as possible to compete at multiple tournaments. Dan Mantz stated in his post above that the net positive from going to BO1 is that he is finding EPs and organizations willing to host more tournaments. So I’m not sure that supporting BO1 necessarily means that the opinion is anti-kid.
Quite by definition, it does not. BO3 says that if you win the first one I don’t have to accept those results, I get another chance.
This is emphasizing the unhealthy attitude many advocates for BO3 seem to have - those other teams are “terrible” and they can only win on “flukes.” Don’t give them any credit for anything they have done.
I’m sorry you don’t agree with me or have the breadth of knowledge to understand that stress is both good and bad, but it doesn’t make it a “pretty silly point.”
Stress is everywhere, and it is not all bad. When people talk about bad stress, they are actually more referring to the bad way that many people deal with stress. Stress is an important part of life, in growing, in improving. When you lift weights, you are putting stress on your muscles to make them stronger. When you study hard concepts, you are putting mental stress on yourself to become smarter. When you compete, you are voluntarily putting yourself into a stressful situation so that you will have the opportunity to feel the ecstasy of victory or learn from the pain of defeat. Your body produces adrenaline in response to stress to give you an extra advantage in the situation at hand. Stress is not always bad.
Step one - accept the situation you are in. Don’t spend wasted energy on trying to change it. Be a graceful winner and never a sore loser. Give credit to those who deserve it; build up and don’t tear down.
Step two - Learn from your failures. Why didn’t things go the way you wanted? What factors contributed to the result? Which of those things are in your control to improve (work on fixing those). Which of those things are out of your control to improve (work on limiting those, and mitigation strategies for when those come up).
Step three - keep a positive attitude. Learn what a growth mindset is - don’t ever let yourself believe that you are as good as you can be, or that you can’t improve, and don’t ever let yourself believe that you are not able to improve.
No, it wouldn’t have. It would be one of countless comebacks in a BO3 world where the “good team” gets a do-over.
They won. They get to hang their hat on that. The underdog knocked out some favorites. They should be proud of what they did.
That’s pretty neat, in my opinion, and probably made for an exciting event to watch. Who could have predicted that! It does, actually, get boring to see the numbers 1 and 2 ranked teams win every tournament.
As an EP and a coach of a team I agree that the BO1 is stressful for everyone. I do also see the benefits of it for local tournaments and would not want to change it at that level.
I am in favor of a compromise of some sort for the State Championships, Signature Events, and Worlds however.
As some have already stated this compromise would inevitably create issues in the tournament manager that would need to be addressed and dealt with but I think it is something that could be overcome.
There are a lot of good points being made on both sides. Thank you to all that have been able to do so without adding any personal stuff that takes away from the points being made.
More events and more access for students is a good thing, we agree on that. Why BO1 led to this, or where this information came from, I don’t really know. I think we all understand that correlation does not prove causation. If there was a survey about this given to EPs, I never got it.
What I meant by my comment was that on these forums some of the adults are quick to shoot down student ideas. I just think that some of us adults might need a reminder that we are in it for the kids, and they should feel that their opinions are heard and valued.
I am in an even smaller minority, in that I wish that best of three AND three-team alliances would return. I know that the vocal crowd didn’t like the three-team alliance, but, as a coach of rookie teams, I feel it was the best for the rookie teams. They actually had a chance at winning something. My region is shrinking, and its going to continue to shrink. There’s absolutely no incentive for it to grow. Every competition is won by the same teams, and after enough of that, teams stop coming. I can’t keep roboteers. They don’t want to drive three hours to get beat, and have NO chance of winning. With the three-team alliance, the top teams needed the lower-level teams. They needed to be able to work with them and help them. There was incentive to help them succeed. That has been taken away. I love the organization that dominates our region. They are amazing, and it’s not their fault that the region is not-so-slowly disappearing. But, it’s not going to get better anytime soon.
This year was a really good year to try new things and experiment. My mind has been changing back and forth between liking BO1 and wanting to go back to BO3, but as the year starts to come to an end I think the GDC/RECF needs to consider and make changes to their competition system depending on the outcome of this year. As I have seen in many organizations, I found that VRC is not just a competition, but also an idea-generator that gets extended off to FRC, FTC, and BEST. I have found the majority if the ideas that were developed here be carried on to other competitions, such as the “Reverse Double Four Bar” and many other names/build techniques. I have found that the weak systems and metal, bearing flats and gears/sprockets that cause friction, and a statically-unstable V5 systems causes us to adapt and figure out solutions to create more efficient, unique, and consistent robots. But despite those things, there will always be faults which are inevitable and out of our control, which we should not be punished for. I favor BO1 because it makes us strive for consistency, but I would rather favor BO3 because it’s more forgiving of the inevitable problem of the VEX systems.
I actually liked the three team alliances for the same reason. However, I did see that opposite side of throwing matches and not being completely truthful in order to jockey for position. But, if there is a dominant program in your area, they would probably pick their own teams for their third alliance team anyway.
They couldn’t… it didn’t work. After they had picked themselves for their second picks, they had to find other teams to fill in. Let’s say they had the top eight spots. One picks two, three picks four, five picks six, seven picks eight, now, when it comes back around, they HAVE to pick someone else. We became pretty good friends with some of their teams, because of this.
While I’m not sure if I 100% agree with you, I think that’s really good point that a lot of people haven’t really considered. In Georgia for example, 2 schools took home 77 awards this season. When going to a tournament, it was rare for a school outside the 4-5 good programs in our region to take home a single award, and I think that’s very detrimental to the program. Although it definitely had its flaws (including a few major ones), it gave a lot of newer/less competitive teams a chance. Last year that was noticeable, but this year the awards are a lot more concentrated on the “good teams”. When a team goes to a tournament with little to no hope of getting an award, I doubt it does much for the growth of the program.
This organization took home 39 out of the 59 awards given in our state this year. That’s 66%. Every other organization got to share 33% of all awards given out.
I got threatened that if I didn’t ally with said team in eliminations they will throw a qualification match. This was with BO1 and 2 team alliances. Threats to throw is inevitable, it’s been happening for some time even in this year. About BO3, with the three team alliances, during nothing but net as a middle school team I became the team captain in the high school division. I picked 590 and 1815B(my sister team). We were very low-seeded, I believe 6th(out of 8th) seed. As a team captain, I used the strengths and weaknesses of 590 and 1815B to my advantage, swapping them out between 590 and 1815B as I predicted who I would be going against. By using strategy of the three team alliances, my alliance went up to the finals. We lost by discobots by only 10 points (Or one orange ball) by using strategy and defense. I found benefit and drawbacks of two team alliances, and I found benefits and drawbacks of three team alliances. The three team alliances provided another source of strategic maneuvers, as well as a backup system in case a teams robot broke and needed repairs. It gave VEX a very unique sense of taste. If we cannot have BO3, I would really think it may be best to try 3 team alliances again with BO1 and I will be interested to see what the thoughts would be.
I don’t see how three-team alliance would work without best of 3. You need to have at least two matches for each team to be able to play. It wouldn’t make sense to bring back three-team alliances without bringing back best of three. How do you see it working?
In terms of picking, like FRC the captain can pick any two teams for alliances, then it moves on to the next captain(compared to reeling through then picking the second team after).
You can remove the rule that a team is required to play. I doubt that if you have the option to pick two teams when you have your turn you wouldn’t play them once when considering strategy. If anything they can make a rule stating that the second round MUST contain a different robot than the first round.
(This is just a thought)
A couple of observations:
- In the early days of VRC there was one program in particular that seemed to win virtually every award at every event in our area. My wife commented (paraphrased) “That isn’t fair that they should win every award” My response was “they win every award because they were better than everyone else”. My teams response was to get better. My program is now just as successful.
- I think that if you are in it to solely win awards and you are not successful at doing so, then you have two choices. Throw up your hands and quit. (And what lesson is that teaching the kids?) Or get better.
- There are teams in our area whose main focus in NOT in winning awards at competitions (not that they would turn them down, if earned). They realize that they don’t have the resources that the more successful teams have, be it money, technical skill/knowledge, meeting time, etc. However, they do VEX Robotics because their students get much more out of the program than awards. The students learn and they have fun. And this is by FAR the best reason to be in VEX robotics.
- I have many alumni of my program and most of them don’t recall specific awards that they won, but they remember the fun that they had, the relationships that they formed, the stories about late night before the event build sessions and so much more than some award.
- I would be just as proud of my students if they didn’t win an award, if they were able to finish the event and know that they had given their best, that they had acted professionally and been good role models to those who encountered them.
Have fun, learn, work to get better, communicate, problem-solve, resolve conflicts in a respectful manner, and did I mention have FUN. Don’t get me wrong, I do like to win. But if winning comes at the expense of the things I mentioned above, then it isn’t winning to me.
Yep. I think I won all of nothing when I was doing robots in high school. But it was still a heck of a lot of fun, and I still learned a lot. The trophies are just carrots to get kids to apply themselves and learn in the process of doing so. Like many other things adults have kids do, we’re tricking them into learning valuable lessons by making it seem like they’re just having fun.
Our team’s overall goal from a design perspective is to win Skills, Tournament Champion, and Excellence at Worlds. They have no illusions that they are ever likely to achieve this, but this is what they use to derive their design goals and their time priorities.
Their practical goal, day by day and competition by competition, is to find something they did poorly before, and do better.
That is all we expect of them at any given time. Make mistakes, learn from them, do better next time.
This.
I’ve had kids come and leave through robotics and when I see them again they recall the good moments they had with their friends, and just having the experiences.
Anyone who knows me and sees me at events knows I’m one of the most competitive people out there. I hate losing, I love winning, I want to be the best, and that reflects on the students I coach as well. But we take it in stride, and I work really hard to never lose sight of what the goal of it is - having fun.
One of my Open teams won the Open Division last week. They’ll remember that forever, but I remember talking with them on Friday night as they worked on getting their autons back working. They weren’t stressed, they weren’t down, they were having fun. They had grown a lot this season, and were pretty motivated to keep doing well, even if they didn’t have working autos and had to rewrite all of their code in the span of a few hours.
After they won it all, they were more sad that this meant their season was over and that they couldn’t come down to the room anymore and had to go back to the “real world”. They were excited for next season.
Actually, we extended our stay for all the teams because they wanted to get better and had that much fun working. They all wanted to win, but I felt more accomplished as a coach because I could see the genuine drive each team had at getting better. That’ll stick with me and the team longer than this Championship trophy will, because I think the real goal was accomplished in seeing my teams work their hardest, overcome adversity, and just never stop trying to get better.
I watched them do it 
your students collectively have an awesome mindset and work ethic, and it was inspiring to watch them have just as much fun tuning their autons as I was having at the party.
How we can help people get the most out of vex goes way beyond bo1 or bo3. I would argue bo3 helps (it certainly helped me) but it’s really a question of drive and mindset. And I have no idea how to teach that. But Oscar might 
I understand that is not an easy set of problems to solve. And on top of that they all are interconnected, and tweaking one part of the system starts influencing another part in sometimes unexpected and undesirable way.
As several people have pointed out, statistically only a small fraction of the teams that would qualify under BO3 will not make it under BO1. However, a lot of teams afraid that it will happen to them and the fear and anxiety is contagious.
I believe, BO1 vs BO3 issue is mostly in way how it is being perceived by the competitors, parents, and EPs, and the best way to address it, is to explain that RECF cares about students, understands their fears and wants to make sure everyone feels good participating in the program (including competitors, EPs, teachers, parents, volunteers, sponsors, and officials). I hope everyone recognizes the benefits of Dan directly addressing people’s concerns on the forums.
If I am given a choice between BO3 and additional Signature Events as a way to provide redundant paths to Worlds qualification, I would choose Signature Events in a heartbeat.
Perhaps, somebody who is fluent in probability and statistics could calculate exact numbers, but my guess is that if every team, who really wants to qualify to Worlds, will have an option to attend 3 or 4 Signature Events (within a half-day travel from them) their qualification chances should come out roughly the same.
However, teams will benefit tremendously by having few weeks (and not just few minutes) between their first and second chance: Why Signature Events are a Suitable Replacement for the World Skills Ranking - #6 by technik3k
If everybody understands that RECF is making conscious efforts to give the most anxious students the second (and third, etc…) chance to qualify, it should reduce a lot of stress and partially address the issues that RECF is concerned about, like “parent” built bots and disrespectful attitudes from some competitors and adults.
I really liked how @OscarMNOVA12, @536Mentor, and few others said that their alumni did not recall specific awards but “they remember the fun that they had, the relationships that they formed”, …
I believe, that a lot of pressure comes from the parents, who do not understand or appreciate how much educational benefits and fun comes from just participating in the program. The awards are always nice as the confirmation that team is doing something right, but are not necessarily the end goal.
For example, I think that in some respect, the success of the VRC marketing by VEX and RECF is feeding into the problems that we are seeing today. It is great that colleges are measuring student’s success in VRC as the part of their admission process, but the act of that measurement is not independent and is heavily influences the process.
I find it very hard to believe that students are the origin of the argument that I’ve read recently more than once: “we spend all these money on the overpriced vex parts,” therefore “there better be some results” assuming it refers to qualifications and awards.
I have to agree with @Anomaly on this one. At my regionals, I ended up winning tournament champ against the two best teams there. I was part of the six seed. We were a good alliance, but we shouldn’t have won. Even though I was the one benefited, it didn’t make me feel better. Instead, I just felt as though I shouldn’t have won. We ended up beating the opponents 17 to 15 because three of our robots got entangled, leaving only my teammate. This really shouldn’t have happened. Everybody in the finals still made it to Worlds (Excellence and Skills) so I didn’t feel as bad, but I still wasn’t happy. Had it been BO3, I most likely would’ve lost. And I would’ve been happy with it.
In SS, I lost in finals to 8025B, now 81118P, a really good team. I wasn’t sad that I lost. I was happy that not only did I feel like it was fair, but I was also happy for Christian because he won fairly.
So, I personally think that Bo3 should come back. I do, though, like the change to two alliances per team.
If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. I think there are a lot of good points supporting Bo1. But in the end, this is about having fun and learning important skills, not how to put another team down. So, I think whichever is the most fun and engaging for teams should be used. With that said, thank you for your time.