@Foster The robot that won Excellence at World is a 180. However, beyond having one of the meta bot designs of the year, there is a bigger problem with the result in general.
The team that won Excellence at World went to 2 Signature events where they did not earn any of the judged awards. The Signature Events gave out every judged award, yet this team was not good enough at that point to be awarded any of them. These Signature events were in late December/January–so their notebook was already fairly complete at that point. They then win Innovate at their State Championship that qualifies them to World, even though in the same attendance were two other teams that won judged awards at the same Signature Events, yet these two teams did not earn a spot to World.
This team then proceeds to World, and earns Excellence at the World level. The Excellence winners of the same 2 Signature Events were also at World, with one earning the Amaze award and also top 40% in all robot performance meeting the criteria for Excellence, and the other earning the Inspire award, in their respective divisions. Again, the team that won Excellence at World had already previously competed against these two teams at two different Signature events where this team “did not earn any” judged awards at all.
In other words, the Excellence winner at Worlds improved in leaps and bound towards the end of the season, outpacing teams at their State championship that did better at Signature events, and subsequently, outpacing Signature Events Excellence winners at World.
If we assume that they have the same notebook but with added pages, and maybe some iterations to the robot, how could there be such a huge discrepancy in the judging between all these events? The added pages to the notebook after January, even if improved, cannot erase the previous entries. One would have to wonder then, with digital notebooks being accepted, if Vex should have a way of tracking every submission of notebooks to make sure that they are in compliance–i.e., cannot have started all over, or modify to be better much later in the game.
It is also worth noting, that the team that won is from a Pay-to-play organization that is also an Event Partner. Essentially then, they had access to all the notebooks of teams that compete in their events—this has always been a huge conflict of interest and a red flag in all the years I’ve coached.
I am personally thinking twice about coaching Vex IQ this year. There are too many inconsistencies, and too many conflicts of interests between EP’s, Judges, Refs, etc. The kids that do the right thing (design/build on their own) know when the result of a competition does not seem fairly dealt, and it results in heartbreak and some bitterness. This is difficult to deal with, because as a coach we really have no control over the environment of the tournaments. When kids feel that the result is fair, they usually come around quickly to accepting it, and figuring out how to improve.