If one team has won 2 tournaments,
and the other has won 4, should they be kept from competing with the rest of their school in other tournaments before state?
Depends what you’re asking. There’s no rule saying they can’t compete again, and I certainly believe it would be unfair and maybe immoral to keep one team from competing so another can qualify. (I would link a thread that talked about a similar situation with engineering notebooks, but I can’t find it anywhere) However, any school would probably have the power to stop a team from going even if they shouldn’t. If the other team’s worried about qualifying for states, that’s what skills is for.
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I would advise against this. Not only would it mean that the other teams would have less experience playing with better robots, it doesn’t make sense from a qualifying perspective. If your already qualified teams happen to qualify for states again, the spots go to teams in the robot skills list at the tournament (the highest un-qualified teams). It would also be unfair to the teams that already qualified, as I bet they probably enjoy competing with their fellow sister teams. (Btw there is no rule against this, it just doesn’t make sense to do so).
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If your reason behind not letting them compete is because you want you other teams to qualify, I would have them go and help you other teams qualify. If they are already qualified for states, they can try and ally with their sister team. We will be attempting this at a tournament next weekend.
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No. The qualification just rolls down.
Don’t do this. Instead, if a situation like this arises, advise the teams to go a little less hard or something. But even of you don’t, as mentioned above, the rest of the qualifying spots will go down to the next highest skills scores.
Edit: I misunderstood, the suggestion in the post above by @9MotorGang is actually a great idea and fine approach to this situation.
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Sometimes a great team will simply choose not to submit their “award winning” engineering notebook after winning a couple Excellence or Design awards, and simply place high. We’ve had a few teams in our organization that have done this. But it is always the team’s choice.
As others have said, rather than “game” the system by not allowing exceptional teams to play, good teams that run their skills competitions will get their qualifying positions from the skills rankings when the “multiple qualifications” of the top teams are taken into account.
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I would NEVER ask one of my teams to go “a little less hard”. That is disrespecting their alliance partners and their opponents.
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Not running skills or not turning in a notebook is perfectly fine as you are the one the misses out on an award.
Rule g1 states that all teams must abide by the code of conduct. The code of conduct states that teams must
support your alliance partners
Your team can’t make the choice to throw. Both teams in an alliance must agree that they want to loose if you are going to throw.
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Okay, but just to be clear, what I’m suggesting is not throwing for the other team/alliance partner. What I’m suggesting is the team intentionally doesn’t perform as well as they usually would to provide space for the other teams. I know this isn’t the best idea, or the one that everyone will agree on, but I think it is a viable option if the team and coach are fine with it.
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If you’re worried about qualifying then just run skills. even if you’re 5th, you still have a good chance because of double qualifications. At 2020 East PA states, the top 12 teams in skills qualified to worlds because most of the people ranked high up were already qualified.
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intentionally doesn’t perform as well is just a fancier way to say throwing
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okey dokey.
Anyway, I think the best way to go about this isn’t what I mentioned above, rather not doing one or two aspects of the competition such as notebook, or skills. Either this or trying to ally with the other sister team in eliminations.
Under no circumstances should teams be playing below their ability or intentionally rigging the outcome of a match. Even if all four teams in a match agree to manipulate the outcome, that is unfair for the rest of the teams at the event. If this occurred, all four teams would be in violation of the code of conduct.
EDIT: I just noticed this discussion is under the VEXIQ category, my original post was referring to VRC. However, even in IQ, both teams rigging the match would be intentionally manipulating the rankings and unfair to all the teams at the event.
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The code of conduct outlines the behaviors and standards participants are expected to follow. It is different from the game manual in that it does not list every possible action that is considered a violation of the rules. If that were the case, it would be a massive document, and even then, it would be impossible to cover every possible unethical action.
The full bullet point you were partially quoting from the code of conduct is as follows:
Good sportsmanship, which includes supporting your alliance partners
Emphasis added. Supporting your alliance partners is just one part of good sportsmanship. Throwing matches is not good sportsmanship and a violation of the code of conduct.
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No, since how many tournaments you won does not have a direct connection to the spirit and participation of the team. you could have only been able to sign up for two, since maybe all other slots on other competitions were full , and the other team just got lucky. in my opinion, score does not determine proficiency, I think it should be judged by effort on the robot and notebook, and maybe on percentage of games won.
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Don’t hold back your best teams. In this situation we frequently discuss with our kids (high school age) that if they want to be the ones winning all the competitions/awards then what they really need to do is figure out what’s holding them back. Hint: it isn’t the better team.
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