One of my biggest gripes is that the rules aren’t enforced. Wish it was true that they DQ’ed! However, if RECF judges had, this team would have been DQ’ed because they also had a 180 bot.
This team attended 2 Signature events and I have first hand accounting witnessing this team in competition at one of them. At that Sig event, the Excellence winner was praised for being original; they received a judged award in their Div at World which aligns. In contrast, although the Sig Event handed out all judged awards, the World Excellence Award team did not receive any of them. It was a similar result at their other Sig Event; this team did not qualify for any judged award. The Excellence winner there went on to receive a judged award in their Div at World which again makes sense. The judges at World were aligned with the Sig judges in recognizing these two teams.
It was a red flag however when I saw that the team that received Excellence at the World level. So I looked into it a bit and posted about it.
Because something just felt off, I looked into the results a second time, and realized this team didn’t meet the robot performance requirements. This is the one important threshold that makes the Excellence judged award impressive; a student-centered robot design that is also competitive enough on the field.
If no team met the Excellence requirements, the guide to judging states that the Excellence award does not have to be given.
Something is definitely off, and it is worth RECF’s time to fix it before next season begins.