Competition
The game & the competitions overall stay relatively constant every year. This section goes over how competition works, and some things you might want to know about it.
Smokey Mountain Regional Sign, By Eddie Conales, 2025
How do competitions works?
In terms of competition, it is just an event where teams compete.
- We have skirmishes, which are non-ranked competitions where we would test our robot on an actual game field. These aren’t a requirement to attend, but give the team opportunities to test the robot while it is still being worked on.
- We have Regionals, whish is where official competition happens.
- Finally, Worlds, is the main event. How the team makes it to worlds is explained in What is Worlds?
What is a Regional?
It’s where the team formally competes against other teams. It’s where placement for worlds is (often) decided, and is where awards are given out. The team only goes to two regionals in a season (matter of cost).
What is Worlds?
The entire point of regionals is to make it to worlds. It is the main event where the best teams compete. As of 2026, there are basically three ways to make it to worlds. There are other ways, but you don’t need to worry about those at this moment.
- Being a finalist in a regional
- The Impact Award Finalist
- The Engineering Inspiration Award
What does it mean to be a finalist?
If the team wins at a regional, they gain a seat at worlds to compete. This is the traditional way of getting to worlds.
What is the Imapct Award?
Without going into immense detail, if your team can demonstrate the incredible impact the team has on it’s community, they get to compete at worlds against other Impact award finalists. It is the most prestigious award in FRC, and as such is incredibly difficult to gain.
What is the Engineering Inspiration Award?
Without going into immense detail, it focuses inspiring people to join engineering. Quoting First directly, “Celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community”.
Pre-competition
When we go to a competition, we need to load the robot and any parts / tools we may need to fix the robot, along with anything else needed at competition (speak to the mentors if you want to know about the specifics). Everything gets loaded into a truck, and the team rides seperately in a bus. Not much else to say here.
Competition Layout
This is a very basic layout, but is generally the universal one. Stands surround 3 sides of the field, with pits behind it.
The team sits on the stands to watch the matches, scout the other team, or if they aren’t doing anything else and want a rest. It’s recommended to put your stuff in the stands as the pits don’t have a lot of room.
The field is where matches happen. It’s where robots do the robot things. It’s where practice matches, qualifying, and the actual eliminations happen.
The Pit
Team 1014 working on the robot in the pit, By Eric Manneschmidt, 2025
So the pit is where teams set up tents to work on the robot. You are required to have safety glasses here, so either bring your own, or borrow some from the team (please return them).
Each competition usually has a pit map on their website, which outlines where every team is in the pit. Everything is organized so there is no guess work.
In the pit you will always find two stations, the Pit Admin desk, where you can ask for
information. The Inspection desk, which may or may not be near Pit Admin is where you go when it is time to get
the robot inspected
Pit Admin
This is essentially the information desk for teams. You likely won’t interact with them much beyond getting the schedule, and getting the times of when you compete.
Inspection
There are three seperate times when the robot IS REQUIRED to be inspected. This is to make sure your robot won’t you know…explode and what not.
- Before you can practice
- Before you can go to qualifying
- Before you can go to eliminations
Inspection Team, By Eric Manneschmidt, 2025
Competition Timeline
The schedule year over year stays pretty consistent, and follows a standard 3-Day span.
Day 1 (On Arrival)
When the team first gets to the competition, 5 team members at most head to a back entrance to unload the truck, and to set
up the pit. The rest of the team goes through the main entrance, and finds seats in the stands.
Team 1014 Unloading The Truck, By Eric Manneschmidt, 2025
Day 1 (Practice)
The first day of competition is dedicated to practice. It allows for work to be done on the robot, and test functionality on the game field and on the practice field. There are two forms of practice.
- Practice Matches
- These only run on the first day. It follows the same style as a match. It allows drivers to get used to how the robot feels, and allows testing functionality on game field.
- Practice Field
- The practice field allows the team to test the robot with the game pieces.
Day 2 (Qualifying)
The second day is dedicated to qualifying matches. Each team plays in several qualification matches, where they are assigned two team mates and three opponents. At the end of each match, each alliance wins a certain number of rank points depending on how well the alliance did during the match.
The average of how many rank points you have denotes your “place”. The team with the highest average is first, second is the 2nd highest average, and so on. The goal is to score as many rank points as possible in a match to keep the average high.
Day 3 (Playoff)
Qualifying matches that still need to be completed will happen at the beginning of Day 3 to finalize rankings.
This day is where scouting information is used to make strategic decisions. The goal is to find other teams that the team hopes to join / invite to the alliance. The team might not always be in the elimination phase, which is okay. It’s a learning experience (and if it isn’t the last competition, learning where the robot can be improved).
After all the qualifying matches finish, the competition convenes for alliance selection. In an alliance there are three teams.
- The Team Captain
- This is usually a team in the top 8 (but not always).
- They invite other teams to join the alliance.
- If they win, they go to worlds.
- The Second pick
- This team is invited to join after the team captain is announced. The team may accept or decline.
- If accepted, the second pick joins the alliance.
- If declined, the second pick creates their own team, assuming a spot is open, else they go back to the pool of potential teams.
- If they win, they go to worlds.
- The Third pick
- After second picks have been completed, they go in reverse order (alliance 8 -> 1).
- The team may accept or decline. Only should a team decline if they are certain another alliance will choose them.
- they DO NOT go to worlds if they win.
After alliances have been picked, they play in a double elimination bracket. The alliance with most points
at the end of the match goes on to the next bracket. The team that loses either gets dropped to the lower bracket, or
if they are already in the lower bracket, are out of the competition. In the final match, the two remaining alliances
play a best of 3 to decide the winner.
2025 Smoky Mountain Regional Playoff, first-inspires.org
How A Match Works
Role Pins
- The Drive Team
- The Technician
- The Human Player
- The Coach
- Safety Captain