I’ve found Battlebots is actually rather affordable at the 1lb and 3lb weight classes. But If you think Vex tournaments are unorganized these things are way way less refined.
That match hurt. Of course. We were very happy with how well 6135W did, and hoped the blue alliance would win. But kudos to red, because they won, and deserved to. Would things have been different with BO3? That’s a question nobody can answer. Which I guess is your broader point.
I like many others am a fan of the two team alliances but BO1 is annoying to deal with. In a recent tournament in the finals our team was allied with the 3rd seed (one of our teams) making us the 2nd seed alliance. We, being a dr4b lift bot, flipped over due to driver error in our first match. While we had been flipping over quite a bit that comp, this flip happened right at the start before any points were scored. Along with this, our alliance partner’s autonomous failed, which was a killer autonomous, giving the opposing team the autonomous bonus. We would have easily went on to finals with BO3. I cant say we would have won the competition if we went on, but we would have atleast won semifinals.
2nd year competitor
For the most part, I agree with this, and thank you for delving so deep into these issues. The points about v5 are on point 
The question from my perspective is what do you, as a mentor, think about this issue? The EPs and competitors in this thread speak for themselves, and most everyone seems to agree that some middle ground between pure bo1 and pure bo3 is the best. My compromise would only add a significant amount of time to states, nationals, signature events, and worlds. We’re talking about under an hour, per region, per year. From the responses of EPs in this thread, many of whom are pretty invested in the program themselves and care about the student experience, I get the sense that the tiny bit of extra time is okay with them.
I guess what I’m getting at is you’re preaching to competitors about why they shouldn’t care about the best robot winning, and your preaching to EPs about why they should care that bo1 saves time. The fact is that most of us competitors, even those of us not in the ultra competitive top 1%, do care about finding the best robot at a competition, and see it as a huge part of the experience. Losing on something stupid is really frustrating. Maybe you’re right- maybe the RECF’s mission statement is more important than winning, and maybe we shouldn’t care. But we do. A lot. Look at everyone with the “Bring BO3 Back” tag in their signature. Ask random competitors at your next competition. We care 
The compromise I’m proposing tries to balance that student mentality with the EPs needs of saving time. Clearly a lot of people, adults and students alike, take issue with the current elimination format. And it seems to me that nobody would take such strong issue with my compromise, which still saves the EPs a ton of time, but gives the competitors a bo3 bracket when it matters post. The RECF can have mission statements all they want, but if we can make the experience better for everyone, why not? All I’m asking is how you, as a veteran coach, see this issue.
So my question to you is, again as a coach, how do you feel about my proposed compromise in comparison to pure bo1 or pure bo3? Do you see it as an acceptable middle ground that gives everyone what they need, or do you have a merit-based objection to it?
I have been an EP for 5 years, and a mentor for 6. Over the years I have volunteered at many tournaments, including as a referee.
We are located in SoCal, where tournaments get heated and loopholes to rules have in the past been found and exploited. I strongly suspect that many of the rule changes we saw this year are a direct response to events that happened in this area in the past. Therefore, I can certainly understand that the changes were made with the best of intentions, but after almost a full year of competition, I don’t think all of them are working well.
Alliances of 2: Overall, as both a mentor and EP, it seems that everyone prefers alliances of two. It keeps the game fair and seems to fix the “strategy” some teams used where they would throw matches in order to be chosen as a third alliance by teams they knew.
BO1 vs. BO3: I MUCH preferred BO3, both as a mentor and as an EP. I really don’t think that it makes events much shorter. Ours end at about the same time they always did because there are now 16 alliances instead of 8. Yes, more teams get to play eliminations, but really, how much fun is it for that #16 alliance to get destroyed by the #1 alliance? Sometimes those teams that have had a bad day would rather just go home after not being chosen in alliance selection rather than wait around to be humiliated. I would prefer to see 12 teams go to eliminations where the top 4 alliances get a bye from the first round. That way we could still use BO3 without adding too much time to the tournament. I would be willing to compromise with just having BO3 in the semis and finals, but I would prefer to see it in all eliminations. As has been discussed previously, random disconnects and failures can happen in any match.
I think another aspect that hasn’t been talked about too much is that BO3 makes the refs’ jobs much less stressful. It seems like, in recent years, the games have been increasingly difficult to referee. Refs are human and calls get missed occasionally, especially since video replays are forbidden. With BO3 if a ref doesn’t see something, or has to make a very tough call, they know that the team’s entire tournament isn’t going to end on that one decision, there will be a second chance.
All fair. From my time as a competitor, the things i hated most about the experience were the built in randomness of the competition. The third member of the alliance, the random pairings for qualifications, the unreliable equipment. Especially our senior year. We weren’t nearly as good as the students we have been lucky enough to mentor, but we put 20 to 30 hours a week into it. I would get to school at 7:00 AM and go home at 10:00 PM every day, work through lunch, work during study hall. Having all that work get handicapped by a disconnection or having to play a third team during the second match of the tournament was frustrating beyond belief.
Once i came back to volunteer as a mentor, i had a lot of the same complaints. We (myself, @TheColdedge, and our own mentor from our competing days) have discussed countless ways of improving the level of competition in the best interest of using the competitions to teach as many technical and soft skills as possible, get the participants as close to trained engineers as possible during the course of competing, and improve the ability of the final rankings and results to accurately predict the best team, as well as how to compromise the system to maintain the low barrier to entry. We’ve prototyped and simulated some things, tested what we can, and we do actively seek to further improve what we as mentors can give to our student participants via competing.
We also struggle to scrape together volunteers to host competition, we have gone to a competition that went several hours over schedule, and have seen Indiana’s high school involvement in robotics drop for the last few years (not all bad, as our elementary and middle school has skyrocketed beyond belief, which will hopefully flow downstream to us in the coming years). Shortening competitions is a good way of making things easier on volunteers.
RECF removing three team alliances in favor of two team alliances was one of the best pieces of news i had heard. Their logic following to maintain the number of teams in the elimination tournament by increasing the size of the bracket and then to maintain the competition duration by cutting down BO3 to BO1, while i did not like it (again, i do not like the randomness personally), it made sense. And i tried to pull back from my personal desire for what i wanted the kids to get out of the program and see it a bit more in terms of what RECF is trying to accomplish. We as mentors are working toward a different goal for the students than RECF is, and this is endlessly frustrating. But i do not think it is a bad thing. It just needs to be kept in mind.
Your proposed solution is fine. Really, honestly, nothing wrong with it. My problem with most of your posts and arguments, is that everything is posed as you doing them a favor by extending a generous compromise to them. You speak as if you are entitled to your way, and you are graciously willing to accept less than you want. You speak as if you are the oppressed hero of the light battling the evil corporation. You act as if they would only stop being so stubborn and selfish and just see reason, they would agree with you.
My opinion, as a former competitor, as a volunteer mentor, and as a professional engineer, is twofold.
RECF is providing something truly great, that benefits the world and the human race. I support that. For all the decisions they make that i do not like, i believe they truly are making the best decisions they can with the information available to them. I believe they have data, and individuals capable of making rational decisions. I also do not believe they have any obligation to justify every decision they make, and i believe it is absolutely insane to think they should have to not only explain, but also convince you that they made the right decision.
My second point is that now is not forever, and just because they have not provided unto you the entire thought process, the thought process exists. If i were to hazard a guess, i would say that they understand the VRC competition process is wildly confusing to parents, new teams, new mentors, volunteers, and really just everyone who is not deeply involved. I believe after making the decision to remove the third alliance but to try and keep the same or more people in the bracket, they did not immediately decide on BO1. I expect, instead, they had several ideas, yours included, of ways that they could best serve EP/Volunteer interests, and how to best serve participant interests. And my guess? They chose to start simple, see how things go in facts and data, listen to the ebb and flow of feedback, and then added more complicated layers to the process later. BO1, power of 2 bracket, single elimination is very simple, and very fast. Having different competition styles at different competitions, and at different points in the competition will add a much bigger layer of complexity and confusion than i believe is appropriate at this point.
I think there is a high chance that before all is over, RECF may further amend the competition format. Possibly to your exact proposal. I will have no problem with that. But until then, while as a mentor i do not like BO1, as it is against my personal goals, as an EP and a willing participant in RECF’s competition, i support BO1.
This is really well said. But it’s a bit extreme, no? And I think I’m missing something- how do all the v5 issues relate to bo1 and bo3?
Thanks for sharing your POV both as an ex competitor and as a coach! As a competitor myself, I totally feel that whole first paragraph.
“You speak as if you are the oppressed hero of the light battling the evil corporation.”
Really, I don’t think I’m any type of hero, and I’m certainly not oppressed by an evil corporations. But sometimes when I talk about bo3 and compromise elimination systems, I get carried away in my passion. I know I’ve said this a million times, but I do vex easily over 75 hours a month, I scrimmage or build with friends sometimes twice a week, and I love every minute of it. Truly. Vex has totally changed my life. I guess it’s just disappointing to see the program not live up to what I feel it could be.
I know there was a lot of reasoning behind bo1. I’ve exchanged email / dm chains with Karthik, Paul Copioli, and Dan Mantz. I’ve heard why they switched over, I’ve heard how they collect feedback, and I’ve heard their responses to my arguments. By using those responses and the responses on this thread, I’ve arrived at my compromise solution. So far, nobody has taken serious issue with it, which is something that cannot be said for either the current system or the previous one.
So if I’ve gotten carried away, if I’ve been to harsh, if I’ve sounded entitled because I’m pushing so hard, I’m really, really sorry. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gotten carried away making a point online. But you’re absolutely right that I think I’m right. If the RECF announced my compromise solution, word for word, tomorrow morning, I think Vex Robotics would be a better program. I have friends who quit because of bo1, I have others who have become less involved even though they’re still technically affiliated with their team, and all the EPs I’ve seen are old faces. The new system has advantages over the old system and vice versa, and I feel like my compromise gets the best of both worlds. And reading through what other people have proposed in this thread, it seems like I’m not the only one
So if I’ve come across as how you’re describing in this thread, that’s my bad. But as long as the compromise I’m proposing seems like a better alternative than anything else, I’m going to keep gunning for it. And if the feedback mechanism really is broken like @technik3k described, it won’t make any difference at all. But if not, and if the compromise continues to get support, the RECF will implement a compromise something like what I’ve suggested, and the program will be better because of it.
I am glad that @Anomaly started this thread…
And I am glad that it has stayed (mostly) civil so far.
All of us, regardless of our roles, should at least agree to disagree.
Respects is a 2-way traffic, so let’s not go personal.
Oh sorry… I am supposed to introduce myself…
I am one of the robotics dinosaurs… ex-competitor for my university for 4 yrs (waaaay before vex appeared). And went on to work as a Defence Engineer before deciding to be a Physics teacher for about 18 years. And as a teacher, I am also the coach/mentor/teacher in-charge of the robotics club for about 16 years. Been in Vex since Elevation, and attending Worlds since Clean Sweep.
My club are involved in many other platforms other than Vex, eg. electric go-kart, robocup, adruino-based competitons, FLL, FRS (the defunct scaled down version of FRC), FGC, etc…
We also have regular robotics courses (8 to 10 weeks Long) in our school, for students that are interested to know more about robotics. And my members also go to other schools to conduct weekly lessons for beginners as well.
And now… I think we need to make a distinction between vex competitions and vex curriculum.
Vex curriculum is for us to use to get students interested in robotics and to learn more about robotics. Vex competitions are for those who want to take a step further and be really serious in robotics.
I can understand the rationale of bo1 from the admin and logistical aspects, but I cannot agree whenever anyone try to use the vision and Mission of recf to justify bo1.
As I mentioned before, if it is purely just about learning and having fun and inspiring the next robotics Engineers, you don’t need any competitions to do that. In fact, you don’t need vex to do that. There are many others cheaper platforms to achieve all these.
I still believe that when a team signed up for competitions, it means they are serious about it, and they want to take it one level higher than the normal classroom teaching.
If the intention is to expose the students to competitions, then there are small little regionals to go to, scrimmages, and even self-organised mini tournaments.
I always like to draw a comparison between robotics and sports. There are times that we will see comments or posts in the forum saying or questioning why is vex or robotics not given the same recognition as sports.
I think that’s when we need to realised that unless vex competitions show the same level of professionalism, seriousness and commitment, else it will never achieve the same status as any other sports.
And I am recycling the same point that I made - you don’t see any sports association mentioning about finding the best sports teams, it is always about creating awareness and giving the kids the right values, etc… but I am sure all the sports competitions are about finding the best team among the competitors.
And that’s the reason I cannot agree that bo1 is justified by using recf Mission statement.
So in conclusion, what’s my opinion on bo1 - we can keep bo1 at the regional levels… so that no one can say that they have no opportunities to expose students to competitions.
But states level and above competitions are definitely for those who are serious about robotics, let’s have a compromise of bo3 and bo1 (due to logistics and admin issues).
And I am all for 2-team alliances and also 16 seeds bracket. I like the idea of giving more opportunities for the teams to be involved in elimination. The lower seed teams might not be able to do well, but it should at least spur them on to do better next time.
So maybe bo3 from QF onwards for states, national and worlds?
Oh one more confession… I was totally bored during those years that we had bo3 during the worlds finals round robins matches… I am not sure how we can resolve this issue though.
And as for recf sticking to bo1… to me personally, it is not a deal breaker. When we signed up for the season, we know it is going to be bo1 (with the hope that things might get better).
But it will be other factors and reasons that will make the overseas teams leave vex.
Maybe… we should start another thread on worlds qualifications, signature events and removal of (worlds qualifications via) skills ranking ?
This is a good question and it is exactly the point I am trying to make that V5 issues and BO1 vs BO3 are not independent. I believe, they are related in a lot of important ways.
People who know VEX for many years, agree that as the VRC grew in size and VEX marketing in its intensity - the pressure to make it to the next level increased, while percentage of qualifying spots did not. This pressure was in large part responsible for some teams resorting to un-sportsmanship behavior of tanking matches to become the 3rd pick. And switching to BO1 to combat the latter only made that pressure worse.
For competitors like you, who practically live VEX, random hardware failures of V5 combined with BO1 must be a constant source of nightmares. I hope I understand how scary it could feel but I, probably, don’t and neither do most of the adults. @Robo_Eng_13 may be in a better position to relate with you, since he was a competitor just a few years back.
But that is not the only way those issues are related. When you said “extreme” I bet you referred to this part:
That sentence is obviously a dramatic exaggeration. I wanted to give an example of how irrational anthropomorphic thinking may still produce useful conclusions.
I don’t believe in retroactive causality with changing past from the future. I believe in observing two events that already happened (Cortex fate was sealed when Trade-In structure was approved), and understanding that they were correlated through sharing the same set of decision makers and input priorities (that lead to disastrous results). Had the initial priorities been different the outcome could have been much more positive.
The real correlation between shredding Cortex systems, V5 misfortunes, and amount of anxiety it causes to competitors like you under BO1, is due to the business decision to remove perfectly functional Cortex hardware off the market and push V5 delivery schedule even as engineers or beta testers felt that it was not ready. If the engineers, experienced with applicability of the Murphy’s law (risk analysis), had the final say, then nobody would have to trade-in old usable hardware until production V5 systems were fully field tested.
Also, donating old Cortex systems to school districts who couldn’t afford them would not magically fix all V5 problems. Instead, if that was to happen that would be an indication of different set of priorities and that decision makers at VEX, really want to do the right thing and, therefore, have a better chance at making the good decisions with respect to V5.
Similarly, conjecturing that VEX/VRC future is tied to return of BO3 is not implying some kind of magik or supernatural causality.
The logic behind that is an analysis of the worst case scenario. Should a recession occur in the near future (which many economists think is likely) the school districts will try to reduce their budgets. To make decision which programs to cut or reduce funding, administrators will ask teachers, who in turn will try to gauge the enthusiasm of the students participating in those programs. Thus the fortunes of VEX are tied with the sense of good will that kids feel toward VRC. Assuming that kids’ opinion doesn’t count would be both cynical and wishful thinking.
The metric behind how fast RECF restores BO3 is simply there to gauge the strength of the feedback channel between student community and whoever makes decision at RECF and how receptive he/she/they are to students’ feedback vs other special interests.
The stronger that feedback channel is, the more enthusiastic kids will be participating in VRC, and the better chances are the programs will keep full funding.
Again, that is the worst case scenario. Economic shock-waves do not propagate very fast through the system. It has to be very strong and coincide with really bad technical issues with V5 to put VEX in danger of folding in the next few years. However, ignoring catastrophic scenarios just because they sound improbable, is not a good habit. If the cost of the fix is low, then it makes perfect sense to implement the fix now and be prepared for the worst case scenario in the future.
BO1 controversy is just a symptom of the feedback mechanism that has missing or non-functioning connections. If that is not fixed you could expect to stumble into one problem after another.
If RECF could show kids and adults that their opinion is not ignored, even without reverting back to BO3, that would still be great.
Interesting. So if I’m getting this right, you’re really talking about the feedback chain being broken, with the GDC and the RECF ignoring feedback and hurting the program. And you see bo1 and the v5 crisis (let’s not forget VCS either) as symptoms of this larger overarching problem. @Meng would probably put the skills changes on that list too, and I’d put Turning Point on as well. (Did anyone think precision Starstruck with no defense rules was a good idea?)
If you’re right, and honestly I feel like you are at least in part, these things are related. If we can get a compromise bo3 system back, we might also be able to get the World Skills Ranking back. And nobody wants cortexes back, but maybe Vex will be more careful next time they upgrade the system. Maybe next year’s game won’t have so much defense.
And if the stars line up right, maybe this amazing program will catch itself and get back on its feet. More carefully considering the feedback of the participants is definitely a good start.
I understand that it is not a simple task to run RECF which needs to accommodate the needs and wishes of all VRC participants including students, teachers, mentors, EPs, volunteers, and sponsors. They all have unique and sometimes conflicting needs and they all need to know that they are special and without them VRC would not exist and could not fulfill its important mission that it was created for.
I, also, know that kids sometimes could be very annoying. I count in thousands the number of times that I said to my daughter in the last few months that “I love her but no new iPhone,” and I suspect that she doesn’t need iPhone as much as she wants to hear the first part of the sentence over and over again. Kids are annoying not because it gives them pleasure to torture us adults, but because they need our help in facing their hidden fears, and regardless of how tall they have grown, they still need a lot of encouragement and reassurance.
What may seem like a minor annoyance or inconvenience to us adults may feel like existential problem to many of them. I am not saying that we/RECF have to listen to kids and give them everything they want. I am saying that RECF have to make everyone feel that they are being heard and not ignored, but kids are special in a sense that their natural development requires extra attention.
In addition to attention kids need guidance. Nobody expects that if you give a group of students boxes with robotic parts, the magik will happen and they all by themselves will learn how to build Worlds class robots. Sure some of them may have natural talent for engineering, but even they will achieve much better results with the help from mentors and good curriculum.
@Robo_Eng_13 has said a lot of really interesting and important things in this thread from the point of view of both the former competitor and the current mentor (really, re-read his posts in their entirety, it is worth it), but I find this quote particularly telling (emphasis mine):
I am very curious what it is that he finds “endlessly frustrating” because I could share my own frustrations and maybe we both will feel better that we are not alone in this.
I am very frustrated with some of the things that could make our mentoring life easier and shouldn’t take much effort from VEX, but were never done. I will mention only a few to stay within the character limit of a single post.
For example, we need to give our students easily accessible and searchable knowledge base. How hard would it be to make vexforum search more usable? Ok, if that is too hard, how hard would it be to attach an official wiki to the forums? We, mentors, are willing to spend hundreds of hours filling it with useful material. Some of the mentors are already doing that, but without central semi-official repository there is a problem of discoverability and fragmentation. Moving official Q&A to yet another non-obvious and non-search-friendly location and leaving many students and mentors without access privileges made things even worse.
I would love to see a couple of tweaks to the official judging criteria documents that would make students pay more attention to math and physics and less to the bureaucratic paperwork that judging criteria expects in the notebook. How many of our students do you expect to write professional notebooks at their future work vs how many you expect to benefit from better knowledge of math and physics?
Also, as a Judge I would love to see award system improved and diversified, because I hate to see Excellence and Design awards going to the same two teams at every local competition (even though they deserve them 100%) and having only Judges and Sportsmanship award to cover the rest of 100 or so local teams. Good luck motivating any other team to work on the notebook if after few competitions of their first season they figure out that it is a useless exercise.
Finally, I would love to see an Online Challenge asking high school students to produce videos with educational content that could be used to introduce beginner teams to robot building basics, tricks, programming, or physics relevant to VRC games. Then place winning entries in easily discoverable and sercheable repository. The only effort of this type was when @jperaman used to ask teams to submit their code after the end of the season.
Some of those changes would cost exactly zero dollars and zero cents for RECF and VEX to implement, yet have a potential to increase educational value of the program and make mentors’ life less stressful.
People have been complaining on the forums about some of those things for a long time and other improvements would be obvious to anyone at RECF/VEX who would ponder a question “what could we do to help our students and mentors to be more efficient?” Yet, I didn’t see any positive changes, so am going to conclude that either this feedback channel is non-existent or nobody is really interested interested in this kind of improvements.
Yes, this is what I am trying to say. It may be that they don’t really want to hurt the program and honestly believe that they are taking enough feedback and acting on it in a rational manner. But we are not privy to any of their internal considerations.
From my outside point of view it looks like they are either taking no feedback, or seeing it but consider irrelevant. And if other students, mentors, and EPs feel the same way because of lack of meaningful communication out of VEX/RECF, it doesn’t really matter what is happening on the inside. The health and stability of this, mostly volunteer, program depends a lot on the mutual respect and goodwill between the parties, once it erodes below a certain threshold it is very hard to recover from it.
If I were head of RECF I would start worrying a lot when mentors like @Robo_Eng_13 that usually help students resolve technical questions, start spending most of their time in the threads like this sharing how frustrated they are.
No, BO1 is here to stay and World Skills Ranking will never be reinstated.
I am sorry that @Robo_Eng_13 spilled this secret, but BO1 was introduced to imprint into the minds of the top VEX competitors desire to fight for justice against the ruthless corporate conglomerates of the future.
This season was the part 1 of your training.
And just in time for Worlds 2019, GDC will introduce another rule change that will totally screw over anybody who spent hundreds of hours building and debugging their robots.
That will mark beginning of the part 2 of your training.
Everybody tells me that this is hopeless mission but, I believe, @Anomaly that you and your friends have enough skills and robotics experience to defeat the army of Facebook’s killer bots at the start of the Great American Revolution of 2036.
Good Luck!
Thank you for the laugh!
He was serious …
Year 3 is when they unveil the new aquatic competitions fields at Worlds without any notice… showing that the great GDC does indeed listen to feedback. You’ve got your water game, too bad you did not have time to dip your robots in plastic-dip…
Here’s my take on this.
No disrespect to any of the teams on either alliance, but why does the blue alliance deserve a second chance at winning the match? It’s clear that the blue alliance missed their autonomous, but that’s nobody’s fault but their own. The E-Bot Pilons (5225A, Red Alliance), spent 2-3 seasons developing their motion tracking algorithm for the autonomous period and programming skills. They finished their robot in late November (iirc) in an attempt to become as consistent as possible. They worked extremely hard to ensure that their autonomous worked every single time, and it did. How is it fair for a different team to have a less consistent autonomous, then ask for another chance to win the match?
If you look in the driver control period as well, 185A almost tipped their stack and wasted valuable time righting it. This time likely could have swung the match. The Red Alliance won because they didn’t waste time and were arguably one of the most consistent alliances at worlds. How is it fair to them for another alliance to ask for multiple attempts to beat them?
I think a better example of the cons of BO1 was during the art division eliminations, where 1010X and 6627A won 2 matches just because their opponents got dqed, and didnt get another chance to defeat them.
Well said. 1010X and 6627A were two really strong teams, but both of the alliances they faced could easily have at least made world finals as well.
And while we’re on the topic of consistency, the team with the smallest range in their scores in the RR also finished dead last.
Another example: 929U lost at their signature event today because they DCed in the quarterfinals for half the match.
We could easily find 50 more examples.
But the question is, do you @bid.p , as a competitor, prefer my proposed compromise system to pure bo1?
This is a great thread and I am following it closely. I wish I could respond to every point made. I do feel it necessary to point out a couple things and then share a story…
The REC Foundation has over 23,000 VEX Robotics competition teams with over 200,000 students in our programs. We depend on Volunteers and Event Partners to run our events. That’s how we keep the tournament costs so affordable so that students have multiple chances to participate in events and learn and implement the design process and enjoy competing with and against other teams. So it is a difficult (and thankless) challenge to balance the needs to the teachers, students, coaches, parents, sponsors, VEX Robotics, the REC Foundation staff, event partners and others I’m sure I am overlooking. But understand that without EPs our programs will not fundamentally exist as it is today. So yes, I do tend to listen to their input carefully.
The number of students, coaches and EPs that participate in this thread is a fraction of a percentage of the overall number of students, coaches and EPs in the program. I do value your input but I also seek and value the input of the much larger majority that are not on this forum. I have personally spoken to over 100 EPs / coaches on this topic and the overwhelming response to BO1 is favorable because it makes tournaments easier to run. And the two team alliance is almost universally praised. This does not mean we have shut the door to making tweaks to the format such as have been proposed here. But understand that the overall community feedback is more positive than the sample size on this forum.
I’m still new to this role and I continue to learn more about how we (the REC Foundation) is doing and how we can improve. I travel to events almost every weekend. I’m actually in an airport in Alabama right now getting ready to fly home. At every event I attend, I talk to the EP, coaches and students. Anyone that knows me or has been to an event that I have attended knows that I am approachable and seek feedback, especially the critical feedback. That’s how we as an organization will continue to improve. And I think we have made a lot of changes for the better based on this feedback. But I understand more than anyone that we still have more to do. I just ask for some patience.
Finally, I want to share a story from this weekend. I always ask EPs, the coaches and the students for their feedback on BO1. One student I spoke with yesterday told me he generally preferred BO3 as a competitor, but after helping run a tournament at his school last weekend, he really appreciated BO1. And now he understands the trade off much better. And he concluded that BO1 wasn’t bad.
I hope that the feedback on this thread and forum will continue to be civil and constructive. And I hope y’all have a better understanding that we do not make decisions in a vacuum.
Thanks,
Dan
CEO - REC Foundation
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all out!
While the posters on this thread are a small percentage of the vex population, so are the EPs you’ve talked to. The fact is there’s no reasonable way to survey every single person in VEX, and it’s the RECF’s job to make decisions based on the feedback they do receive. It sounds like the feedback you’ve received has been overwhelmingly in favor of bo1, hence the current system.
But what if rather than asking about just bo1 or bo3, you asked EPs about pure bo1, pure bo3, or my compromise system? My guess is quite a lot of EPs would prefer, or at least not object to, my compromise (which really is much closer to bo1 but makes life much easier for competitors and refs), while many competitors strongly object to bo1, and have even left the program because of it. I’m sure you’re aware of the outrage surrounding bo1, and looking for some reasonable alternative would be in the best interest of the competitors and of the program.
Thank you for your consideration!