My team was fortunate enough to snag a spot in the Southern New England regionals and I was wondering what I would have to score on skills to even have a chance at qualifying for worlds. I looked on robot events and saw that 8900 is currently in first for the state of Massachusetts (scoring 70 combined) however they are ranked relatively low overall in the world. Is there even a remote chance that scoring 60 would be enough to qualify me for worlds? Also, how competitive are other regions looking for skills?
Right now the cutoff for skills is 93. I would expect that number to continue to rise as we approach worlds – you’re probably going to need to score over 100 to secure a spot.
That makes sense, however I was under the impression that if a team were to qualify twice during a regional qualification, then the extra spot rolls down to the next highest scoring team in skills that is currently not qualified in the competition. In Massachusetts there has been very little competition for skills with the top score being 70 and second place is only 43. Am I wrong about how the spots roll? I am fairly new to Vex.
The system of how spots roll down is confusing, but from my understanding, in the World Skills Rankings, spots don’t roll down. You must be in the top 50 in the world. Even if they did, with a score of 60 points, you would only be in about 260th place in the world and would continue to drop lower as the cutoff date nears.
You are correct. For the Southern New England Championship, if there are any double qualifiers, the remaining spot (or spots) go to the highest Robot Skills score posted in the state/region that are not among the teams that qualified through Excellence, Tournament Champions, etc. In your case, it would not just include the Robot Skills from Massachusetts but also include whatever other states in your region which looks like it includes (at least) Connecticut as well. Connecticut has scores of 58 and 51 at the top of its skills rankings.
This is not referring to the World Rankings, but how spots from a state/region are allocated. See my post above. The invitation from the top 50 World Robot Skills ranking is totally independent from qualifying through a state of region.
I’m not entirely sure how this works in your case since this is a Regional event. It looks like your Region includes teams from CT, MA, and RI. In that case, I believe the total available Worlds spots is 18 for High School (CT = 5, MA = 12, RI = 1). The event page shows 15 qualifying awards from the tournament. This leaves 3 openings for Worlds bids to be filled based on Skills scores. In addition, if any team double qualifies that adds another opening from the Skills list. The top Skills score in MA, CT, and RI is currently 70, but then drops to 58, 51, 43, 41, etc. A Skills score of 60 would currently put you second in your region, which would qualify you for Worlds. With double qualifiers and teams with high skills scores qualifying through the tournament, I would expect a ranking in the top 6 to 8 in Skills in your region should get a team to Worlds.
Maybe I can clear up some of the confusion. There are two different ways one can get to worlds through skills scores.
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have a top 50 robot skills score in the world when the cut off happens March 12th. These teams will get an invite whether or not they qualified through a region or state’s allotment of spots. It is only the top 50 teams. If those teams qualify any other way, that spot does not work down to others. If a region has 10 spots and two of them have high enough scores to be in the top 50 and the two teams qualify through the region, the region still only has 10 spots.
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Qualify through your region. Depending on the number of spots your region has and how those spots are allocated, your best robot skills score could get you into worlds even if it is not in the top 50. Here is an example. In Indiana, we have 11 high school spots and 1 middle school spot. The middle school spot went to the excellence award winner. The high school spots start with the excellence award winner, design award winner, three tournament champions, and three tournament finalists. The rest of the spots come from the global skills ranking on the day of our state tournament (this past Saturday).
The excellence award winner was also a tournament finalist. That means that there were 4 high school spots to be filled by skills. The top four skills scores in the state belonged to the middle school excellence award winner and three teams that qualified by virtue of being tournament champions for tournament finalists. The 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th best skills scores from Indiana on that date were rewarded with the remaining spots. The lowest two had 66 points (with global rankings of 198 and 202 right now).
If an Indiana team goes to another competition and gets a skills score that ends up being a top 50 score at the end of the season, they will be in. If not, they will not get in even if it ends up being the highest skills score in the state.
In conclusion, the only way a state or region gets more participants than its allotment is if a team qualifies through being a top 50 team in the world and the cut off and does not qualify through the normal qualifying process for the state or region.
Hi, I am also in Southern New England. I interpreted your question as being region specific, not for the worlds skills ranking. Having talked to many of the good teams, I can almost guarantee you that you will need a skills score in the 70s. Not many of the good teams have run skills yet this year. Some of them will be able to score in the 50s for driver, maybe even 60s, and I’m expecting 30s and 40s in programming skills. What team are you from?
8568F, I believe I saw you at QCC a couple Sundays ago. So far my team has not really tried skills, we did it for kicks last competition and our claw broke…However we fixed the problems and earlier today I was able to score a 36 for driving skills and 31 for programming. At this point I’m trying to figure out if I should spend more time working on the programming skills or just practicing driving the robot (I am the coder and driver)
A great example of this is Colorado which had its state tournament last Saturday. There are 3 high school spots at states, 2 tournament champion and 1 excellence. The finals matches consisted of; on the red alliance, 3946W and 1826A, and on the blue alliance 3946E and 3946C. The red alliance ended up winning and taking the two tournament champion spots but when the rest of the awards we given away 3946 W also got excellence, double qualifying them for worlds. The skills standing where as follows for the tournament : 1826A in first, 3946 W in second and 3946 E in third. Because 3946W double qualified and 1826A qualified, the spot to worlds then went to 3946 E. My understanding is that if a team qualifies two times or more, it then look at the skills rankings for the day or tournament and goes to the highest ranked team in skills that has already not qualified.
In Mississippi, we go by all-time Skills scores, not just tournament-specific scores. I believe this is what is intended to happen per the rules, although apparently some places do it differently.
This is the procedure used in the past for SNE, season skills ranking for state/region. SNE teams will need to look at CT, MA and RI to see where they stand after the Regional scores are posted.
There’s a good chance we had the 3rd highest skills score in Colorado overall as well; there aren’t many competitive teams out there anymore in Colorado.
No, not at the skills rankings for the tournament, but the skills ranking for the season in the state/region.
I think what he was saying is that the ranking are as of the day of the tournament rather than anything happening after the tournament.
For example, if a team goes to a skills tournament the next day or next week and posts a higher score, that score would not be considered for the state/regional spots.
That is assuming there is not a sanctioned skill-only event after state/region.
No, it is not assuming that at all. For example, let’s say, for example, the state or region held it tournament this past weekend as many did. Those states and regions will give the invites to those teams that qualify based on where they are the day of the tournament. The invites will likely go out that evening or the next day. If a skills only tournament his held the following week and a team from the state or region goes and gets a higher score than anyone in the state, they will still not get an invitation unless that score is in the top 50 based on everything at the end of the day 3/12/17.
Can you please point us to the written documentation of this? When I was an RECF regional support manager, that is not how I did it, but I am not with RECF any longer and they might be doing things differently now. I never sent out the Worlds invitation from state skills until after all official events in the state, including skills-only tournaments, were complete.
We have a skills only event happening in Indiana tomorrow that is worlds top 50 only, since they already finalized the state worlds spots back on Monday. So it might depend on the RECF rep for the state. One of our teams got their worlds invite via the state skills score.