So I am trying to wrap my brain around the judging this season after I had a registering snafu last season and my team didn’t get to participate in STEM. Last year you could be judged on STEM/Design/Excellence only if you had won one of those throughout the season. Makes sense to me you have to narrow it somehow.
This year it seems like you are only eligible for those three if you either win at State. Excellence is the magic key to open all but what about Design and STEM. This doesn’t necessarily make sense to me because both are judged awards. What if a team had the best Design and best STEM but because of the way things are set up were only awarded one award. (Which again I don’t mind, I get that.) Then at worlds they are not eligible for Design anymore, even though they won excellence earlier in the year? This doesn’t make sense to me. Especially, considering that judging can be subjective. Maybe my team wouldn’t have won STEM if someone else looked at it, but would have won Design or vice-versa.
Does this make sense to anyone other than me? Can I get some community clarification?
Thanks
Your team is only eligible for the Excellence award, if they won the excellence award at State:
At VEX Worlds, Excellence Awards will be offered at the Middle School and Elementary School levels. Only teams that have won an Excellence Award at an official state/regional/provincial/national championship event during the current competition year and have submitted their Engineering Notebook will be considered for the Excellence Award at VEX Worlds.
A team is eligible for Design if they won design or Excellence at state:
At VEX Worlds, teams must have been awarded the Design or Excellence Award at a state/regional/provincial/national event to be eligible to be considered for Design.
A team is eligible for STEM if they won STEM, Design or Excellence at state:
*Teams must have been awarded the Design, STEM, or Excellence Award at a state/regional/provincial/national event to be eligible to present a STEM Research project at VEX Worlds. *
So, my team that won design at state can win design or STEM, but not Excellence. But, the team that won STEM at state can’t win design. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s what the official appendix says.