Hi, this year and over the past 3 years of vex I have seen many teams running the same robot under different plates to gain multiple qualifications to state.
So say team 1A takes their really good robot and wins a a tourney and gains a spot in state.
So
1A( qualified) and 1b, 1c (not qualified)
Then say the team has a tournament a week later Team A wants to help the B team qualify for state. So what Team A does is they take their robot and driver and have them compete for team B during the next tourney(and winning) therefore qualifying the B team for the state champs.
I have seen many teams doing this and last year one team in my state earned 6 spots at the state champs using the same robot and team members. IS this legal? There is no rule against it and I saw the posting made by the official Vex GDC account on the few forums earlier this season speakingg about the legality of sharing a robot between teams.
Interesting for sure, but it’s perfectly legal believe it or not, there’s no rules switching team members and robots from what i’ve heard unless it’s been added recently, whoever does this though is obviously not giving their students a challenge to get better and make a better robot than what they had, it’s stupid but legal
The closest rule to address anything close to this is <R1> and it only restricts a team from using multiple robots at the same event and does not say anything about multiple teams using the same robot.
There was a Q&A earlier this season and the GDC made it clear that even though they do not encourage this practice it was not against the rules and that one of the reasons is that it would be impossible to enforce.
For example, if you switch out either subsystem 1 or 2, you have a new robot. There is no possible way to know that this has not happened with an identically built subsystem just using different parts.
Our senior team this year had a rough year they made a good robot but they made finals in one tourney semifinals In another then got a bad matchmaking the 3rd time so we signed up for a 4th tourney and took our main team and had them compete under our 4th unused plate and during the tourney our seniors got to semis but got beat out by the A robot and the A robot won and we got the awards and everything but a few days after the tourney which was about 2 days before state, the regional coordinator who ran the tourney we qualified in took the state qualification away from our seniors. We were very surprised because it was is common practicr to see where we compete and we were open about it and no one cared and they let us compete and gave us the awards. So when we showed him the ruling from the GDC and spoke to him how we weren’t breaking any rules he refused to give us our qualification back and told me that I can make a case and fight his decision but if we did he said he would take away qualification from our other 2 teams.
We didn’t break any rules and it is very common practice but the REC guy still took away the qualification from ououtr seniors which was their last tournament ever and their last chance to ever qualify for worlds.
What can we do about this since we didn’t wanna say anything until after state
You would have to bring it up directly with RECF above your regional rep. As for it being very common practice, that certainly is NOT the case here in Wisconsin.
I don’t see why they would do something like this that could be considered unethical when if the other team is a decent robot the good team could just pick them for an alliance and still have a good chance at winning
The reason we didn’t do that is that OUR A team got picked early most tourneys and out Serniors tended to get picked on the bottom 5 so our A team would always wind up smashing the B team. They lost to A team in the finals and semifinals so we really wanted to qualify them for state and since a ton of other teams do this we decided to do it to get our seniors in on their last year but our problem is that we didn’t break any rules and the man is still taking away our spot despite the fact that it is fairly common
I am not sure where you are from, but I do not agree that it is super common. Maybe it is where you are from, but that has not been my experience at all.
Here is my take, for a long time in Wisconsin, there was one program that dominated the state. My teams’ robots would be good, but not near the caliber of this other program. The solution: my teams started working harder and made better robots.
In my opinion, it is too bad that your seniors would not have qualified for state. But maybe, they should have built a better robot.
In pro baseball, for example, you can not take your major league club and play in the place of your Triple A team to get them into the Triple A playoffs. In my opinion, a team/robot should qualify under their own merit and NOT use someone else’s robot to qualify if theirs wasn’t good enough.
Is it legal, by the letter of the rules, YES. Is it ethical, in my opinion, NO!!! Students need to learn that they succeed (or FAIL) on their own merits.
I hope this isn’t a common practice in our region. Really unethical from my perspective.
A really good skills robot could be passed around to the different teams at each tournament to guarantee they each team had better scores for qualification. Other teams that legitimately earn a spot on their own with their own robot (Built & Designed by their own hands) are pushed down and out of the qualifications. That’s awfully unethical.
Okay so it looks like 3674N is team not preforming well all season and 3674Y is the team they lose to in the finals.
This event https://vexdb.io/events/view/RE-VRC-17-3097
My question is that I see all 4 of the teams at that event? So 3674G and 3674R are the 2 good teams and one of them plays under the name 3674Y? Who is playing under the name 3674G/R then?
How is the EP at fault here? As an EP I only really get to know a few teams I see regularly at a tournament and can’t always remember if they were a “N” or a “Z”. I think here the Coach who does that to secure spots at state is at fault. Just my opinion.