Subject: FW: Robotics status

-----Original Message-----
From: B.I. [mailto:brooks@forethought.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:33 AM
To:  Coaches
Subject: RE: Robotics status


Looking at last year's map of Colorado teams, there were 10 Colorado Springs 
teams.  I'm sure many of them in fact had multiple teams at one location.  The 
activity's grown every year, so we can assume there are more CS teams this year.  
Therefore, the UCCS tournament should be fair sized.  Not as big as Poudre, but 
big enough to be a challenging competition.

Our chances of winning at UCCS may be better since the teams are all newer.  Or 
not.  Who knows?  The Poudre meet has a lot of veteran teams, then again, it 
also has a lot of teams that just do the robot and haven't done the research 
project in the past.  That may change given the requirement of having a research 
project to be eligible for state.  For some it won't matter, they just do the 
Poudre tournament robot and that's it for them.

A reasonable scenario would be to have both our teams compete at UCCS where they 
would benefit from the synergy of competing against each other, in addition to 
everyone else.  And with the smaller venue, maybe have a little better chance at 
one or both teams winning a spot at state a month later.

Looking at it another way, if one team goes to UCCS and the other to Poudre, 
other things being equal, the CS team would probably have a better chance at 
making it to state.  That may become a source of division in the teams.  The 
split scenario last year was more a child of necessity than a choice.  In the 
context of this years program, plenty of equipment, plenty of teacher expertise 
to manage the students, available competition slots in a single tournament, an 
experience pool to draw from, all these things lead me to keeping the groups 
competing with each other, but also proximate in their experiences.  I think 
that will be a stronger experience for everyone. 

Yes, you could register all teams for everything, but that really is a grind.  
Tournament days are also tests of endurance and they're long days.

And yes, performance experience is critical.  For this reason, I think the 
seasons should be structured to arrive at a competition-ready profile at least a 
week before the tournament, maybe more, and have the last practices just consist 
of drilling the performances over and over again - both robot and presentation 
performances.  For the robot, 10 flawless runs in a row is the gold standard.  
Consider that the research project presentation should have a similar degree of 
polish.  The teams should definitely do complete practice performances for each 
other, and maybe also for the rest of the school prior to the tournament.