I figured I would give it a shot here as emailing Vex Support Directly has yielded not a single reply.
Last week at the North Side Coders event in Fort Lauderdale, FL two teams were allowed to pass inspection:
ONE:
Had no ability to shoot or pass, only with a claw to attempt to grab the ball.
TWO:
Had a single band on its retriever that had snapped prior to competition prohibiting it from executing either function.
CAVEAT:
This was the first time these two teams entered in to the tournament, were students of the hosting school, and were given this chance to compete.
RESULT:
My daughterâs team, who made the playoffs EVERY SINGLE WEEK prior, were unluckily paired with both these teams in competitions (they were the only team to have this occur) resulting in them missing the playoffs, and as a result the statewide competition. This was something she and her teammates had been working towards this entire school year. Without those two scores they would have placed in the top five.
STANDARDS while maintaining inclusiveness and compassion:
ONE: How were teams without a competition eligible not allowed to compete?
TWO: Why not allow them to âcompeteâ but mark those scores as friendly exhibitions?
It seems horribly unfair to those training this entire time to be excluded from a tournament as a result of this. Their hard work and efforts were nullified due this. I asked the Vex Team to nullify those two scores, as well as any team that had them as pairing to be fair to all parties who participated. Iâve received nothing.
Thanks in advance for anyone who can provide helpful feedback here.
Matches are made randomly, with no influence for event organizers or anyone else => Simply bad luck, nothing we can do about that
There are no inspection rules that would disqualify a robot for not being able to score => These 2 teams legally passed inspection, your argument is invalid.
It doesnât matter if this was their first tournament, every team has to start somewhere => No reason to disqualify these two teams
Results from prior tournaments donât matter when matches are made => Again, bad luck. Nothing we can do.
Seems like youâre pushing all the blame onto these 2 unlucky teams. In any competition, there will always be something that will go wrong. Part of VEX IQ is figuring out how to deal with it. => To put it bluntly, **** happens. Deal with it.
Lastly, thereâs nothing we can do about match scores anyway. The tournament has been over for a week, and match scores are now locked and canât be changed at all.
There were 8 matches per team. Their two lowest scores did not count in the rankings.
All of the students should design a robot that can work well with whatever robot they are paired with.
Any of the weeks of competitions could have qualified this team to the state event. There were also many judged awards at the event and some of them would have also qualified to states. Some have nothing to do with their performance on the field.
First and foremost, I sure hope you didnât put these teams down at the competition. That is a blatant G1 violation. All teams have the right to play and compete. There is nothing in the inspection document or rules about a robotâs ability to play the game as a requirement. The only way that teams can learn how to compete is to go to competitions and compete. It is a very important design consideration to build robots that are able to compete when playing with ANY other robot.
Second, VEX IQ already does a good job of dealing with this situation. After every four matches, the lowest score for that team is automatically dropped. After 4 matches, the lowest is dropped. After 8, the lowest two are dropped, and so on. I think I found the competition you were in, and it looks like each team had 6 matches (which is the minimum allowed). This means that one of the scores would have been dropped. VEX IQ does this to help with matches that might not have gone as planned.
Third: This tournament qualified six teams to state. Winning Teamwork Champion was 2 of those six ways. They also could have won a judged award or done well in Robot Skills. Robot Skills doesnât rely on another teamâs robot, therefore you cannot blame other robots for the lack of a state invitation.
Fourth: Every state competition is filled, at the end of the season, by the skills scores from the state. So, if your daughterâs team has a high enough skills score, which again, doesnât depend on another teamâs robot, they may still be invited to state.
You also mentioned that this wasnât your daughterâs first competition. So, they have had other opportunities to qualify for state.
Please, going forward, choose to never blame another team for a âpurported lack of fairnessâ.
What about the team that had the âbadâ robots? The experience of competeing with teams like your daughterâs will help them have a better robot. Also, inspection just checks if the robot is legal. You (not âyouâ but anyone) should never judge anyting by how it looks. I have had amazing matches with robots I thought were bad.
You usually drop at least your lowest score, usually the lowest two. This is designed for this exact senario.
I am not trying to offend you, but your stance is wrong.
Iâve experienced situations in my 7 years of IQ where an alliance partner that one would consider âunqualifiedâ for competition ends up causing an unfortunate match. Its not something worth complaining about, rather something to learn from, for both alliance partners within such a match.
I have long found the structure of IQ a little bit too luck based, as a good match schedule can often be a big deciding factor in rankings, which is entirely random. However, this structure most of the time still results in the best teams rising up to the top, even though it generates some unfortunate situations for some teams.
I believe VRC mostly fixes this âunfairnessâ because it has alliance selection, and for IQ, especially in this game where the alliance partner being compatible with you is often more important than being the âbest,â I think the addition of alliance selection is really the only situation for problems like this for teamwork matches in IQ.
Im fine with the current setup, this is more of a suggestion for improvement.
1- Agreed, the pairing was bad luck, but for a team that had made the playoffs in every tournament prior, to have that befall them, it was heartbreaking to watch.
2- If the robot cannot execute the base function of either passing or shooting, why should it be allowed? One just had a claw and couldnât pass, the other had a broken shooting mechanism prior to competition, as a result the bot just sat there. Sure, bad luck, but in instances like this it would better serve everyone for those scenarios to either be credited or marked as exhibitions matches. Again, I understand the goal is to be welcoming and inclusive
3- Not saying to âdisqualifyâ them. Let them learn! Just pairing them in high stakes environments for these kids ends up making the process difficult.
4- Understood! The point being was they has shown a history of consistent performance only to narrowly miss in this instance.
5- The entire methodology of pairing is to foster teamwork, is it not? Points for passing, etc. I understand âbad luckâ happens. Usually a team may get one lesser performing team, getting the bottom two?
6- It is what it is. I just wish there was perspective given here that there are kids working their tails off, doing their notebooks, and staying after school every day to participate in this program. That is why a minimum standard every robot should be able to either pass, shoot, or both, keeps someone from having to explain to their kids all their hard work, effort, and skill was nullified due to âbad luck.â
Please do not be accusatory here. We as parents cheered the other teams on, ALL of them. That being said, these two teams could not pass or shoot. One had a claw that could only grab, so after one pass that robot was done. The other had a broken band so it could not pass or shoot meaning again, you could get off one pass but that was it.
My daughterâs team had qualified for the playoffs week in and out, against middle schoolers, as an elementary school. They lived and breathed this. So to miss out, as another one stated due to âbad luckâ is just terrible.
âBlamingâ the other team is NOT what is happening here, letâs be clear. Ensuring there is a minimum standard of competition is what is being suggested. If a team canât meet it, allow them to compete, but as an exhibition score so they can gain valuable experience without negatively impacting the scores of those trying to advance.
I understand your frustration. I have been paired with several teams that have not been able to compete. Like @pmkv said, the matches are random, and there is no rule stopping teams from passing inspection without a functional robot. It would not be possible for the event to mark the scores as exhibitions, because it would cause problems with scheduling and would be unfair to those teams. Iâm sorry you missed states, and I understand that it is unpleasant (I missed states by 1 point last year, and the team that made it got carried because of pure luck), but in reality, IQ is not about the competitions. Itâs about learning and working as a team. The teams that had the robots that were not working were trying their best, and their robot did not work only because of chance. Iâm sorry about this, but good luck next season.
You obviously are passionate about supporting the efforts of your daughterâs team through VEX IQ and are looking to give her and her teammates the best experience and opportunities. Iâm not sure if you are a coach or just a supportive parent, but Iâll share some thoughts about how I think you can use this to help the team learn and improve going forward.
First, I think all coaches, mentors, parents and students should have an attitude of being welcoming and encouraging to all teams, regardless of their level and experience, especially in the VEX IQ program. Competitive educational robotics programs are a great vehicle to get students excited and engaged in STEM in a way that few other activities can. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and those initial experiences of students play a big role in how they will be encouraged and motivated to continue. Your daughterâs team had a first competition at some point as well, and they have improved since then. The students on these teams will hopefully be excited to continue and improve and learn and aspire to be as competitive and successful as your daughterâs team. That attitude is fostered by positive experiences with the students and teams that have gone through the growing and learning process.
As a higher-performing team, or even a team that is working towards that goal, there are a good deal of practical and concrete things that can be done to minimize the âbad luckâ* factor of getting paired with developing teams and be in control of their own destiny at events and throughout the season.
*Quotes because Iâm not a fan of that attitude. Teams are paired at random, but no one should ever be made to feel like getting paired with them is some how bad luck for the other team. These are all opportunities to learn and grow for all participants.
Know the rules of the game. This may sound obvious, but I believe it goes deeper than most think it does. Knowing the rules of the game involves everything from how the game is played to the rules about the robots to the best strategies and even the rules for the tournaments. One example in Rapid Relay is understanding the value of passes in the game. A lot of teams didnât seem to grasp that simply having each robot touch each ball counts as a pass in the game. Even if a robot couldnât pick up a ball and score, if they could just drive and push a ball, they could be involved in a pass. Each robot starts with a preload, so the first thing they should do is drive away from the ball they started touching and go to the other ball. Thatâs 2 passes to start.
Find your match partners and make a plan. Every tournament consists of randomly assigned pairs for teamwork challenge matches. The first thing the students on a team should do after the schedule is generated is to track down their match partners and start having discussions about how they can work together during their match. If they have time they should run a practice match together. Donât assume that new teams know the rules as well as your team does! Your team might need to help them understand how they can contribute to the match in a way that maximizes both teamsâ capabilities. Note, since this is a Student Centered program, it is the students that should be finding and talking to the other team and coming up with match strategies. It would be the coachâs role to help guide them and encourage them, but not have the conversations for them or determine the strategies. It also would be a coachâs role to ensure that a team isnât suggesting a strategy of âyou sit over there out of the way during the match and we will get you a good score.â
Focus on improving the aspects you have full control of as a team. Teamwork matches are often the most emphasized portion of a VEX Robotics Competition tournament by teams, but they are only 1 of 3 components. Skills competition and Judging are huge parts of the competition, and are mostly not impacted by the random pairings of the teams. Of course the hidden benefit is that the more your team improves in aspects that contribute to better skills performance and better consideration for judged awards, the better they will perform in teamwork matches.
Work to help your fellow competitors improve. This can be a challenge during a busy day at a tournament, but as a follow-up to #2 above, see if you can find some time to have members of your team help the teams that they are paired with that need the most support. Back to the idea of teams passing in the competition this year, if the robot can drive around the field and push a ball, they can contribute. If your team finds they have a partner that is struggling with just even driving around successfully, maybe your team can spend 15 minutes to help that team get some basic driving functionality working reliably.
This is already long so Iâm going to try to wrap it up. I looked at the event and noticed a few things that are somewhat questionable but are more on the Event Partner. There were 63 matches for the event with 21 teams, meaning each team had 6 matches. The published agenda had plenty of time for 8 matches. I always try to get 8 matches in for IQ tournaments, because that lets the 2 lowest scores drop. Also I looked at the awards list and there were several judged awards that were given to the same teams (no team should win two judged awards at an event).
Good luck to you and your team in the future. I hope that even if their season has come to an end that they had fun and learned a lot, and I hope they continue in the future and are an inspiration to others!
Everything said here is great advice. And much kinder of a response than I had in mindâŚ
A few other items to consider:
1- Skills pays the bills- Skills takes the other teams out of the mix. If there are double qualifying teams at an event highest skills will qualify for states. With double qualified and open spots at year end, skills is the best way to advance outside of teamwork champ and excellence.
2- There are Signature Events if you feel your team needs a higher level of competition. There wonât be claw bots there. And if you win there you go straight to worlds.
3- You really have no idea what it took for those two teams to arrive at that tournament. Maybe theyâre new to vex, maybe their competition robot fell off the table the morning of the event, maybe they didnât just copy a robot from online or buy the design from FacebookâŚBut to disparage their robotâŚcome on manâŚ
but Im pretty sure somebody said that they played 8 qualis that day, and so they should drop two scores right? But Clinton said that they only dropped one score. So isnât that also wrong.