I have been receiving conflicting answers about whether skills scores and rankings should be considered when deciding who receives Excellence Awards in my region. I’ve been told by numerous people that the only thing that matters is that teams are in the top 40% in both skills and qualifications. This confuses me, especially since in the Guide to Judging: Award Deliberations, it says:
For example, if a team was nominated for the Think Award but did not score highly in Autonomous Coding Skills, they may not be a strong candidate.
If Excellence is a higher award, why wouldn’t skills scores matter?
A question from the Judge Advisor Certification course:
Which factor is considered when determining the winner of the Excellence Award?' Select the best answer.
Performance rankings at the event
Quality of team interviews and notebooks
Team conduct, and student centeredness
All of these
The correct answer is all of these. Does performance ranking at the event really stop at 40%? In our state, this means a team with a skills score of 110 and one with a score of 42 are essentially equal when it comes to the Excellence Award. At our state tournament, there will be 60 teams. I realize the top 24 teams in qualifications technically qualify for the Excellence Award, but does that really mean the top teams and team number 24 are equal?
I held a tournament where a team received the Excellence Award with a skills score of 43. They got 15 in program and 28 in driver. That team was ranked 7th in qualifications with a 4-2 record and earned 11 win points. From my understanding, the Design Award is on the same level as the Excellence Award, minus the performance portion of the award. The Design Award winner at this tournament scored 110 total for skills; 50 for program and 60 for driver. They were undefeated in qualifications with 13 win points and faced the Excellence Award winners in both qualifications and finals. The Design Award winner went on to win Skills and Tournament Champion. How does a team with a lower skills score than the autonomous skills score of the other team win Excellence? How is that considered the all-around better program? They lost to the Design Award winner twice.
I want to be clear: I am not asking for the results to be changed. I am looking for clarification on what the Excellence Award actually represents. In the VEX Robotics Award scripts for the Excellence Award, it says: '
The team also demonstrates outstanding competition performance by being among the top performing teams at the event.
If skills rankings and qualifications only matter as long as you are in the top 40%, how is this the overall top team? Are skills scores and qualification rankings supposed to be considered when deciding who wins Excellence, or are they only used to qualify for the award? In my region, I am being told they are only used to qualify for the award and nothing else. Am I misunderstanding this completely?
From my REC Rep:
Rankings don’t matter as long as they are within the top 40%. I always have to remind my teams of that. They will get upset because they beat an Excellence Award team by 40 points in skills, and I’ll say, “It does not matter, you were both in the top 40%, so you’re both eligible for Excellence. Something else was the deciding factor. The judges don’t even look at those rankings until the very end, just to verify that the team they want falls within the top 40% of all performance categories. Don’t consider rankings when trying to figure this out. Look deeper.”
If I have this wrong, that’s fine; I just want to make sure we are doing things correctly. I want to ensure the Excellence Award is going to those who truly deserve it. Thank you.