My team has our states qualifier this Saturday and I was just wondering if what happened with some of the teams is actually allowed.
What has happened this season is that for most of the qualifiers there have been a select few dominant teams from a handful of schools winning all of the tournament champion and skills awards. To compensate for the majority of teams most of the other awards such as judges, amaze and even design and excellence!! (yes design and excellence!) have been given to the less superior teams, many with dysfunctional robots. Only 1 out of the 6 teams at my school has won a design or excellence award because they give those to what seems like any random team. We can’t even go for design or excellence at worlds (if we make it) because we haven’t won any at our local qualifiers in 5 or 6 tournaments, meanwhile, our engineers notebooks are on another level compared to the teams that win design and excellence.
What makes me question this even more is that teams that haven’t won an award to qualify them for states are now allowed to register for the tournament. The host just opened it up to all teams because they want more to participate. Is this even allowed? I thought states was only for teams that qualified but apparently it will be just like a regular qualifying tournament.
It is not uncommon to invite teams to a state/regional championship after the qualifying teams have registered. The procedure is to invite first from robot skills rankings, then from the wait list, then the general public. There are no rules against making a state championship completely open to any interested teams, as long as the qualified teams are given space.
Yes. You should be able to get the qualifying criteria from your RECF rep. Normally, after all the tournaments in the state have finished, if there are teams that have qualified multiple times, the leftover spots are awarded to the teams with the highest skills scores that have not already qualified.
Regarding excellence and design award, I guarantee you it’s not random! You should encourage your coach, mentor, or parent to serve as a judge. This will give you insight into the judging process and give you idea how you can improve your engineering notebook and interview so you can win an award.
No trust me it is random. It is basically a split between functional bots and non-functional bots. The functional bots win tournament champs, tournament finalists and skills and the non functional bots win design, excellence and the other awards like judges and create and those kind.
Our teacher who has years of experience has tried to speak out against what happened this season in the first few qualifiers but only received an enormous amount of backlash which is why he just keeps his mouth shut from now on. We have looked at the teams who win design and excellence and their notebooks are mostly the game manual with a few pictures of bots online and maybe their bot in their as well.
The hosts don’t want the tournaments to be dominated in every aspect by the handful of teams that put in the most work and perform the best, which is why we only win the awards that are guaranteed given to the team that actually deserve them (tournament champs, finalists and skills). To compensate, a lot of the other awards are given out to those teams less competitive and who seem to not care about robotics as much.
I will say you might feel this way and it’s understandable, but I think some of the facts don’t align with what you are saying per say. Your team went to 5 events this year according to VexDB. Your school did end up winning a Design or an Excellence Award at 3 out of the 5 events (which is amazing congratulations) . The other two events seemed like the judging was a bit split, but just by skills scores and not seeing the robot designs nothing looks super fixed or unusual.
As an Event Partner, I know finding and training good, fair, and dedicated judges is always a hard task. I love my judges and volunteers, but I understand that it’s not an easy task. The REC and VEX provide great materials, but it is still hard to get everyone trained in time especially if you have your own teams your training as well. The best thing to offer as a team is as much support for events as possible. In our area a few of us started a committee in order to help out and support all the local Event Partners and teams. The best thing an experienced can do is offer a judging/volunteer training workshop early in the year and have event partners send their volunteers there.
From a team perspective my teams have been on both sides of the judging “really?” fence. There have been events where my top team has gone undefeated, ranked 1st in both Programming and Driver Skills, and won the design award but no excellence award. But just in our last event 333X (an elite level team) did everything right and 333U as well were incredible (I know they have great notebooks also) and there were two or three other teams from schools that I thought did better than ours, but I had two teams end winning the Design and Excellence Award. I was so stunned that the judge afterwards came up and explained how we won. What I’m saying is sometimes it can come down to a variety of things, work just as hard on your notebooks, programming, and interviews as your robot and the outcomes will be favorable in the long run.
I think you out yourself in a difficult situation when you make a blanket statement about what the hosts want or don’t want. If you have solid evidence of your claims, then they should be shared with your RECF rep.
I looked at all of the events in New York through Robotevents. I was looking for the following criteria: Qualification Ranking, Skills Ranking, Design Award and Excellence Award. In virtually every event (except 2), there was a strong correlation between the Qualification Ranking, Skills Ranking and Excellence Award. Since I was unable to see the team’s Engineering Notebooks, how they ranked in the lessor judged awards and the Robots themselves, it is very difficult to say exactly how they won Excellence. However, there is a rubric/calculator that is available for the judges to use that looks at each team and sees how they rank across the board in all of the judged and performance categories. The Excellence Award winner does not need to be the best robot, but it should be pretty good. It should go to the robot/team that consistently scores high in Skills and Qualifying as well as ranking high in Design and whatever other judged awards that the Event Partner has chosen to give. As for the two that I mentioned above, they did seem to have a disconnect between how the robots performed and the Excellence Award. However, i was not at the event and I don’t have access to the information that the judges at those events had.
As an event partner, I know we follow the rubric very carefully. The judges do not even know who wins the excellence award until after everything is said and done. They give input to the design award which is part of the criteria for the excellence award but at both of our tournaments this year, the design award winner did not do well enough in skills to get points there and ended up not winning the excellence award.
It is clear, though, that not every tournament follows the rubric. For example, @nichols jj gave an example where a team was the top in skills, qualifying, and won the design award. I cannot figure out how an EP can follow the rubric and that team not get the excellence award.
There is a particular EP that for years always had the excellence award going to a team at the host school that had not otherwise qualified for state. This was true even if the team did not fair well in skills or qualifying rounds. I am happy to say that at least one of the tournaments this year that did not happen. My first year at that tournament, when they announced the excellence award winner, they said the judges had a hard time picking who would get the excellence award. If they had followed the rubric, the judges would not have made the decision.
The bottom line is the best two ways to advance is win tournaments and get really high skills scores. I will say this. Nobody can accuse us of favoring our teams as we do not allow our teams to compete in the tournaments we host. Our team members work as volunteers for the day. I am not saying that should be a requirement, but if more would do it that way, there would likely be a lot less complaints.