So, the Alabama state conference is coming up at the end of this month. And I still have no clue about some parts that I find important enough to ask about.
What is the competition anyhow? I mean Starstruck obviously, but I know it’s 1v1. And since I found that out on here, and couldn’t find that anywhere on the altsa page, I am concerned. So my question is what is different here from a normal VEX Starstruck tournament, like match order and whatnot.
Where does the notebook fall into play? I remember BEST had the notebook score tie into the tournament ranking. Is that a separate award system or…?
Time slot system… as in when does the tournament usually happen? Due to our wonderful planning, this is the only event we are doing at TSA, so is it all done at once or spaced throughout the day?
Pit interviews…that a thing still?
Might be more, given that I remember later on. Also this is actually our first competition period, so I really only know what’s in the handbook. And also the competition program template, thanks again kypyro!
so for tsa competitions you have 2 rounds of skills which whittles the amount of competitors to 32 then from then on you 11 to determine who is first second and third place. Also their are no judge awards and the schedule is based on your skills ranking.
@vexmo
Is it 1 driver skills round and 1 programming skills round? 2 driver or 2 programming skills? Or does the team get to choose? Also, do the skills scores in the 2 rounds get added together due to starstruck’s new skills format?
The way the Alabama TSA state competition will be is that the first day we will run maybe 2 rounds of each type of skills, then they will rank everybody based on their combined highest score. They will then run an 8 person 1v1 elimination(or at least how it went down last year) and the champion, finalist, and the highest ranked semifinalist will be going to nationals. There is no notebook. Can’t wait to see you there!!!
So my team are a bit concerned as to whether or not this is correct. I’m not being critical, trust me I really want this to be true, It’s just that they need a little proof just to be sure.
Don’t just happen to have a statement from TSA on this lying around do you? If not it just means i’ll either ignore the book or email the altsa people.
The way it works at TSA nats is rounds of nothing but kills challenges that rank the teams. Then the top XX number of teams go into a 1v1 tournament till the end when 1 wins.
I have been to tsa for three years where I’ve become a state champ all three times and nat champ once in programming. They do not care about engineering notebooks and there is no judging process. The only qualification path is through either skills or 1v1 as determined independently by each state. In the past I have seen: top two driver skills and top prog skills advance. Top of each skills and top of 1v1. This year it will be too 3 in 1v1.
Because of their independence from vex, tsa regularly doesn’t know what is happening Or even how to correctly call matches. There is often poor structure to the tournaments. I do not however know anything about your state, and the only way to find out would be asking your representative or someone of the likes.
You got that right! Two years ago they started the tournament 2 or 3 hours earlier than printed which threw everybody off. Then they let people sub in and all kinds of craziness. BUT… we were one of the first matches that got called 3 hours early. First when at the queue station they then delayed the team 30 minutes. They had pumped up the tanks but knew there was a small leak that could be dealt with if they had reasonable wait times. However TSA VEX would not let the team take an air pump to the field to re-pump the tank before the match. So my team scored basically nothing. Later in the day we came back and they were letting teams pump tanks up outside the ring, in the ring, and right before the match.
My teams have basically come to the conclusion that TSA VEX is just like a dessert after a great steak dinner… not needed… nothing really big… and can do without it. We just look at it these days as an extra expense.
Ha, maybe next year we’ll have better luck getting started. Our school’s program is pretty new (school is only 5 years old now) So we just got started doing vex stuff a month ago. TSA is actually our first competition in vex period. But hey, that means we get all the hiccups out before next year’s new game rolls around.
Do we at least get some sort of station? Please tell me that even they at least have that.
