It has recently been brought to my attention that the NorCal State Championships went from having 16 open spots to having zero. In relation, an email sent to the RECF representative of that state to an undisclosed team number revealed that Skills would not qualify a team to the NorCal State Championships, directly opposing the VRC Qualification Criteria PDF . Furthermore, all these changes were made in a span of a night. While I am not directly affected by this, it shocks me that a RECF representative would change a vital part of Qualification so late into the season. I know many teams who make robots focused on qualifying for States through skills and after getting their high scores are at a loss for words now. It feels as though all their hard work and all the money spent in going to competitions was not worth it at all. These are just my two cents. Feel free to comment what you think. I hopefully would like to see this be reverted and any major changes to the Qualification system be made apparent to the competitors EARLIER than 2 weeks from the State Championships.
+1
From what I have gathered this announcement was made the night after skills was closed for qualifying for state, and many teams who had focused on skills to get into states are no longer able to qualify. There are teams with scores of 160+ in skills who have not qualified for state because of the last second change. Furthermore, the spots were transferred from the North California State Championship to the Central California States Championship. The NorCal state championship now has a total of only 33 teams of which 14 teams will qualify for worlds. The Central and Southern California State championships both have 50 teams and the same number of worlds spots.
While I understand it is up to the discretion of the RECF representative to delegate the number of seats in the State championship and the method through which they are obtained, I feel it is extremely unfair to reduce the size of an event by 16 teams to avoid qualifying teams through skills. Especially because of the great lengths many teams went to in order to increase their skills score to qualify.
Wow. That’s actually a really unethical way to handle things… I mean like you all said they have the right to change the capacity of the event but that’s still surely going to cause a lot of backlash. After you were sure you could get into state from skills only to find out they changed right after all the competitions are over(excluding state). Is there any reason behind this that they gave? You would think they should have a good reason for making a last minute change that robs teams of state spots they thought they would have.
Agreed.
This change seems extremely unfair and shortsighted. Please re consider.
^
Recf is a usually well organized and considerate establishment that considers most aspects of a team’s talent so it confuses me to see how this happened. Skills is one of the more controllable factors for world’s qualification and it’s a shame some of the most consistent robots that had bad luck at competitions won’t be seeing state level competition. Also the unbalance between NorCal and Central California state competition was rather uncalled for.
I understand if this year was an anomaly and choices needed to be made, but a rationale would be appreciated.
I don’t know much about this, but from what I heard this is really bad. It shouldn’t be this hard to supply us students with the information we need to succeed in this competition. If I were one of the people who worked their butts off only to be screwed over by the California representative, I would seriously consider ending my VEX career.
I’ve witnessed multiple teams going for skills to qualify for states. These teams were hopeful of having a chance at going to the World Championships, but now can’t even go to states, even though it is stated that they should be qualified. I’m not sure how I would deal with this situation if I were in RECF’s position, but I think it needs to be dealt with in a way that is fair to everyone.
How many events did they participate in this year?
I feel as many have stated before me, this is unfair to thouse 15 teams. Why is it that skills no longer matters for califorian teams. Robot skills doesnt quallify and they cant even use the spots to fill up the northern competion.
It looks like they dropped 14 spots from Vallejo and added 3 to Bakersfield. I’m not sure why that was so slow to fill up compared to the other two sites.
I dont see why these spots are taken away now only 9n teams at the nor cal states wont make elims
In my region, a skills score of 40 or higher puts you into contention. However, the rule does say that they will first fill up the event with award winners, then skills. For instance, my region is dominated by a few teams who have won many times. So, there are about 50 slots open for skills. It’s different for every region as to how many people with “skills” go.
For us, this weekend was the final qualifying tournaments to states (I believe. Not 100%, but that’s what I’ve heard going around). It’s the fact that RECF removed spots from states so that they didn’t have to let in people through skills that should be qualified. Many teams wasted a lot of time getting skills scores that should qualify them to states.
EDIT: Some teams are even failing their classes just to get a high enough skills score to qualify.
@Unionjackjz1 completly true and all of that was taken from right under their noses a day after the normal comp season ended. I feel like all 15 teams should be invited to state
As one of the unqualified teams that focused on only skills to qualify (as there were better odds aiming solely for skills), calculated exactly which teams would qualify with what score, and with a top 35 world skills score as of yesterday, I feel deceived that it’s okay to remove 11 states spots entirely, simply to avoid qualifying teams through skills. I was counting on the rules, where it says that “Top Robot Skills Challenge scores will be used to fill the remaining capacity of the State/Province Championship event.” Decreasing the amount of spots available just 24 hours away from the states signup deadline, however, just seems unfair. Here’s the google spreadsheet we used of unqualified teams with their world skills rank, score, and more.
I wouldn’t go so far as to pin this horrible life decision on the RECF, though.
@Aponthis true but its dedication and hard work they put into their bots to get qualed to state and now they cant
Sorry if it came off that way, as that was not at all my intent. My intent of including that was to show that teams have put in blood, sweat and tears into these skills scores, and now are not qualified to states, even though the qualifying criteria states they should be invited.
To add on to the discussion, I believe all three California State Championships should have the same number of teams attending.