Registration 2013

[Bob Steele]

I've made a few trips to Guangdong province recently, on business for Whirlpool. We have both engineering labs and motor suppliers in that part of China. Shenzhen is among the easiest parts of China for foreign travelers to reach -- I like going by ferry from HK. I will very likely be there again for a few days during the upcoming build season.

I agree with Eric's comment above re: language. There are more than 100 million people in Guangdong province today, and a significant fraction of them either speak or are learning to speak English. Of course many of those are young people, with better than average education and a keen interest in science and technology.

Back to my question: does anyone know if FRC 4813 has mentor support from a veteran team?

We will certainly be available to mentor them ...How do we get contact information? We will be at the Spokane Regional

thanks

[Mark McLeod]

No contact info. is listed in TIMS for them.
I'd try contacting FIRST HQ, maybe Carla Proulx, FRC International Coordinator.

[Mark McLeod]

Idle curiosity lead to this...
FRC teams (as of last weekend when I did this) will travel 1.4 million miles to attend events.
That doesn't count the district championships or the additional 367 teams expected to attend the World Championship in St. Louis.
Hawaii wins because all of Australia is attending (or maybe not because a bunch of Australian teams just got removed).

These are the sum of the one-way great circle travel distances in miles of the teams attending each event.

The first two columns are the total for the event & average per team.
The next two columns picked an arbitrary cutoff of 300 mi (as the crow flies) and did the total & average (avgs are a little low, but I'll fix them).

column 1 -----------------column 2-----------------column 3 -----------column 4
Total Travel Distance -- Avg Distance/team -- Total Local Travel -- Avg Local Travel -- Event

67723 ----- 1782 ------ 1159 ------- 31 ------- HI
46462 ------ 845 ------ 6890 ------ 125 ------- NV
30255 ------ 917 ------- 713 ------- 22 ------- CMP
29149 ------ 883 ------- 116 -------- 4 ------- W CA
22445 ------ 423 ------ 3128 ------- 59 ------- SFL
20952 ------ 368 ------- 645 ------- 11 ------- NY
19287 ------ 321 ------ 4805 ------- 80 ------- FL
18941 ------ 357 ------ 1970 ------- 37 ------- IL
17864 ------ 288 ------ 6007 ------- 97 ------- SC
17738 ------ 422 ------ 6229 ------ 148 ------- Spokane
16436 ------ 283 ------ 1816 ------- 31 ------- DC
16003 ------ 276 ------ 3337 ------- 58 ------- TX
15145 ------ 352 ------ 2392 ------- 56 ------- Tor-W
14950 ------ 249 ------ 1873 ------- 31 ------- CA
13104 ------ 230 ------ 5758 ------ 101 ------- OH
12445 ------ 289 ------ 2345 ------- 55 ------- Dallas
11634 ------ 212 ------ 3512 ------- 64 ------- LA
11246 ------ 250 ------ 5969 ------ 133 ------- Northern Lights
11162 ------ 186 ------ 5782 ------- 96 ------- Alamo
10722 ------ 210 ------ 3049 ------- 60 ------- SAC
10419 ------ 282 ------ 4082 ------ 110 ------- Hub
10385 ------ 242 ------ 1962 ------- 46 ------- UT
10364 ------ 225 ------ 1184 ------- 26 ------- MA
10076 ------ 206 ------ 4138 ------- 84 ------- NC
9869 ------- 210 ------ 1116 ------- 24 ------- Israel
9086 ------- 239 ------ 2826 ------- 74 ------- IN
8721 ------- 159 ------ 2666 ------- 48 ------- SDC
8505 ------- 158 ------ 4763 ------- 88 ------- OK
7242 ------- 177 ------ 4320 ------ 105 ------- CV
7205 ------- 168 ------ 6233 ------ 145 ------- Lake S
7194 ------- 156 ------ 1587 ------- 35 ------- CO
7087 ------- 177 ------ 3295 ------- 82 ------- Tor-E
7048 ------- 110 ------ 4336 ------- 68 ------- VA
7021 ------- 149 ------ 2812 ------- 60 ------- TN
7006 ------- 137 ------ 5034 ------- 99 ------- Queen
6920 ------- 177 ------ 4853 ------ 124 ------- AR
6686 ------- 139 ------ 3028 ------- 63 ------- Inland
6445 ------- 117 ------ 1496 ------- 27 ------- SJC
5927 ------- 126 ------- 855 ------- 18 ------- LI
5787 ------- 123 ------ 3409 ------- 73 ------- FLR
5664 -------- 99 ------ 4125 ------- 72 ------- MD
5623 -------- 95 ------ 4203 ------- 71 ------- WI
5612 ------- 112 ------ 5612 ------ 112 ------- C WA
5546 ------- 135 ------ 1603 ------- 39 ------- Montreal
5342 ------- 134 ------ 4665 ------ 117 ------- Crossroads
5206 ------- 145 ------ 1904 ------- 53 ------- WOR
5022 ------- 132 ------ 3537 ------- 93 ------- Pine Tree
4674 -------- 87 ------ 2836 ------- 53 ------- KC
4443 -------- 73 ------ 3441 ------- 56 ------- OR
4185 -------- 70 ------ 2347 ------- 39 ------- 10K
4038 ------- 112 ------ 4038 ------ 112 ------- MI-Traverse
3956 -------- 82 ------ 2104 ------- 44 ------- AZ
3681 -------- 65 ------ 3681 ------- 65 ------- N Star
3490 ------- 116 ------ 2438 ------- 81 ------- MI-St Joseph
3419 -------- 61 ------ 3102 ------- 55 ------- GA
3202 -------- 73 ------ 3202 ------- 73 ------- PIT
2690 -------- 79 ------ 2260 ------- 66 ------- WAT
2679 -------- 62 ------ 2679 ------- 62 ------- MO
2587 -------- 59 ------ 2187 ------- 50 ------- NH
2063 -------- 33 ------ 1625 ------- 26 ------- WA
1983 -------- 64 ------ 1983 ------- 64 ------- MI-West
1793 -------- 37 ------ 1793 ------- 37 ------- CT
1698 -------- 51 ------ 1698 ------- 51 ------- MI-Gull
1202 -------- 33 ------ 1202 ------- 33 ------- MAR-TCNJ
1173 -------- 33 ------ 1173 ------- 33 ------- MAR-Hatboro
1137 -------- 37 ------ 1137 ------- 37 ------- MI-Troy
1106 -------- 36 ------ 1106 ------- 36 ------- MI-Grand Blanc
1101 -------- 36 ------ 1101 ------- 36 ------- MI-Kettering
1019 -------- 29 ------ 1019 ------- 29 ------- MAR-Mt Olive
957 --------- 27 ------- 957 ------- 27 ------- MAR-Bridgewater
939 --------- 30 ------- 939 ------- 30 ------- MAR-Lenape
689 --------- 22 ------- 689 ------- 22 ------- MI-Livonia
665 --------- 21 ------- 665 ------- 21 ------- MAR-Springside
627 --------- 21 ------- 627 ------- 21 ------- MI-Waterford
406 --------- 13 ------- 406 ------- 13 ------- MI-Detroit

[Mark McLeod]

Michigan hit 200 teams.

Two additional Chinese teams have replaced some of the dropped Australian teams at the Hawaii Regional.

[Mark McLeod]

Well, registration officially closed at noon today.
Don't think it ends quite so abruptly though. Many waitlists are still to be cleared, and teams will continue to drift in and out.

2562 teams
223 more teams than last season for 9.5% growth (below the past decade's average by ~3%)
382 new teams (17% fewer than last year)
25 resurrected veteran teams (came back after 2 to 7 years)
182 of last years vets are missing, but that's actually the best retention rate (93.3%) that FRC has ever had.

[OZ_341]

Just curious.... Who has the honor of owning the highest team number and what is that number?
Thanks for all the effort that you put into this each year.

[Littleboy]

At one point this afternoon, there was 2564 teams. 2 must have dropped.
4 of the 5 with the highest numbers came from MI. The highest is team 4839 from Ishpeming, MI.

[Gregor]

How many Ontario teams are there compared to last year. How many have not registered that competed last year?

[Littleboy]

THere are 87 Ontario teams this year. 26 of of these are rookies There were 78 Ontario teams last year. This means that there are 17 missing vets.

[rsisk]

Just curious.... Who has the honor of owning the highest team number and what is that number?
Thanks for all the effort that you put into this each year.

4841 out of Tucson, AZ

[Mark McLeod]

The highest team number for this season probably hasn't shown up quite yet.

After registration closes there will continue to be a gradual rise in the number of teams for the next 10-12 days, before they begin to fall off as loosely organized teams fall apart, fundraising hopes are dashed, unions go on strike. The final count will probably end up around what it is now.
Expect the peak in registration numbers to be reached around December 17 or so, before it begins to drop back to around today's number.

Last year the registration process was extremely long and drawn out. Believe it or not, last year the final team wasn't dropped from the FIRST roster until the first week in April (April fool's I suppose).

[Racer26]

THere are 87 Ontario teams this year. 26 of of these are rookies There were 78 Ontario teams last year. This means that there are 17 missing vets.

Anybody know who the 17 missing Ontario vets are?

EDIT: They are:

Older vets:
843 (been a 2 regional team every year since 2004 [actually, 2005 was WAT/CMP])
1009 (previously defunct from 2007-2010)
1053 (been attending GTR-West only since 2003)
1221 (been attending GTR-West only since 2003, missed 2009, and played GTR-East as well in 2012)
1514 (been attending GTR [GTRE in 2011] since 2005, added Waterloo in 2012)
1535 (a mix, been to CMP 3x, usually attended at least one Ontario regional every year since 2007)
1835 (been attending GTR-West only since 2006)
2076 (WAT in '07, GTR/WAT in 08/09, didn't play in '10, GTR-West in '11/'12)

Single-year teams:
4022
4094
4236
4248
4249
4258
4307
4357
4367

[Mark McLeod]

I've been maintaining some maps of the missing teams. I update it every few days:
http://batchgeo.com/map/8609ea5e7bfafea5ef7f3fcb7f0e09ee

Rookie team locations too: http://batchgeo.com/map/1fc7f4d6e73fc8afa7b47448ab26a4ce

[PayneTrain]

Michigan hit 200 teams.



Not really on-topic, but when is Michigan going to get the appropriate number of bids to CMP proportional to the number of teams in the state?

[Littleboy]

I was hoping 3 years ago. We still have not.
Another question would be when we are getting more districts as 10 is almost too few for 206 teams.
Hopefully, both of those get raised next year.

[IndySam]

When are they going to start clearing off some of these waitlists?

[AlexD744]

I've been maintaining some maps of the missing teams. I update it every few days:
http://batchgeo.com/map/8609ea5e7bfafea5ef7f3fcb7f0e09ee

Rookie team locations too: http://batchgeo.com/map/1fc7f4d6e73fc8afa7b47448ab26a4ce

Kudos to Minnesota, they have seen some explosive growth in the past few seasons and have not lost a single team this year (yet). Growth + sustainability = recipe for success! Good job!

[MARS_James]

Not really on-topic, but when is Michigan going to get the appropriate number of bids to CMP proportional to the number of teams in the state?

May I point out that last year Michigan had 190 of 2339 teams or 8.12% of all teams, Michigan then had 36 of 400 at CMP or 9% of of teams at CMP thus it is proportional

[Taylor]

When are they going to start clearing off some of these waitlists?

I asked the same question; the RD handles the waitlist, so whenever he/she is able to clear it is when it is done.

[scottandme]

May I point out that last year Michigan had 190 of 2339 teams or 8.12% of all teams, Michigan then had 36 of 400 at CMP or 9% of of teams at CMP thus it is proportional

But how many of those were from open registration at the start of the season? They only award 18 slots at Michigan CMP. With no open registration to speak of this year, that number is likely to decrease, perhaps significantly. They only other way for Michigan teams to qualify is via winning an outside regional (along with CCA and Einstein, etc).

For comparison, MAR had 26 out of 99 teams at CMP last year, 12 qualified at MAR CMP, 9 teams registered in the fall, 4 spots were opened up by teams double qualifying at MAR CMP (outside regional winner/preregistration/CCA), and 1 CCA winner.

This year we will have our 12 slots at MAR CMP, 4 teams registered from last year (3 CCA and 1 Einstein 12), and then possibly a few more if any MAR teams qualify via outside regionals (looks like 10 out of 109 teams plan to attend another regional this year). A few of those 12 slots could be lost if 25,103,341, or 365 attend and win MAR CMP or MAR EI/CA.

Regardless, I don't think there's any denying that Michigan produces some of the strongest teams in FIRST, and they'll likely be under-represented this year.

[Clinton Bolinger]

2012 MAR Teams = 99 or 4% (99/2339)
2012 MAR Teams sent form their Regional CMP = 12 or 3% (12/400)

2012 MI Team = 190 or 8% (190/2339)
2012 MAR Teams sent form MSC = 18 or 4.5% (18/400)

Like Scottandme said most of the additional MI teams either paid their way and didn't make it via the District model. Michigan should be sending 36 teams to the Championship via MSC. Also remember that Michigan is going on its 5th year of the district model and we still send the same number of teams (18) in 2012 that we did back in 2009.

That's why we do the math!?

-Clinton-

[dodar]

But how many of those were from open registration at the start of the season? They only award 18 slots at Michigan CMP. With no open registration to speak of this year, that number is likely to decrease, perhaps significantly. They only other way for Michigan teams to qualify is via winning an outside regional (along with CCA and Einstein, etc).

For comparison, MAR had 26 out of 99 teams at CMP last year, 12 qualified at MAR CMP, 9 teams registered in the fall, 4 spots were opened up by teams double qualifying at MAR CMP (outside regional winner/preregistration/CCA), and 1 CCA winner.

This year we will have our 12 slots at MAR CMP, 4 teams registered from last year (3 CCA and 1 Einstein 12), and then possibly a few more if any MAR teams qualify via outside regionals (looks like 10 out of 109 teams plan to attend another regional this year). A few of those 12 slots could be lost if 25,103,341, or 365 attend and win MAR CMP or MAR EI/CA.

Regardless, I don't think there's any denying that Michigan produces some of the strongest teams in FIRST, and they'll likely be under-represented this year.

Then Michigan teams should go to OOS regionals and win those to get in.

[scottandme]

Also looking at robot performance, MI and MAR were well represented in the elimination rounds in 2012. 96 teams were chosen for eliminations, or 24% of teams at CMP. A quick check indicates that 23 of those teams were from Michigan and 8 were from MAR.

The math shakes out to show that 63.8% of Michigan teams at CMP were selected for eliminations, and 30.7% of teams from MAR at CMP were selected for eliminations, ahead of the expected value of 24%.

As a part of the entire CMP event: Michigan made up 9.0% of the teams attending, but 24.0% of elimination teams were from Michigan. MAR represented 6.5% of the total teams at CMP, and represented 8.3% of the elimination teams.

As a share of the entire region: 12.1% of all Michigan teams (190) made it the CMP eliminations, and 8.1% of all MAR teams (99) made it to the CMP eliminations. The average for every FIRST team is 4.1% (96 of 2339 teams).

[scottandme]

Then Michigan teams should go to OOS regionals and win those to get in.

That's not really a logical answer. Michigan and MAR already have a very good to excellent method for ranking teams. Two qualifying events (24 qualification matches and eliminations) that feed into a region championship. Telling teams to spend the time and money to go to another event isn't the easy answer.

We were one of the (18?) teams that attended 5 events last year, and it was draining. Two MAR districts, Montreal, MAR CMP, and World CMP. That was $18,000 in registration alone. Thanks to our hard work, excellent sponsors, and school district we were able to manage that, but we're not the norm in that regard. We could have skipped MAR CMP since we won at Montreal, but had we not been lucky in that regard it's a mandatory 4 events before you can qualify for CMP.

You can also be an excellent team and not manage to get lucky enough to win a regional. Look at 118 this year, they had to win their 3rd and final regional to get a bid for CMP, and they were easily one of the top 10 robots in FIRST.

The easy solution is to adjust the number of bids to be proportional to the number to teams as a region grows. Michigan and MAR are the guinea pigs here, and it's tricky since everyone else is still in the regional system. I think the intent was to keep the same number of slots as there were in the regional system, so MAR got 12 as Philadelphia and NJ were dropped in the transition to MAR. MAR grew by 10 teams this year (99 to 109), so we now have 1 CMP slot for every ~9.1 teams. Michigan has 1 CMP slot for every ~11.4 teams (18 for 206 teams).

It's not a direct comparison, but California is close to Michigan in size (216 teams), and has 6 Regional events. No idea about waitlists, but right now those 6 events have 320 teams registered, or 1 slot for every 8.9 teams competing (53 team/event average). Competing in Michigan is roughly equivalent to attending a 68 team regional, with teams that are significantly better than average.

[Jimmy Nichols]

I asked the same question; the RD handles the waitlist, so whenever he/she is able to clear it is when it is done.

I found out that Susan, RD for Ohio, has authorized the clearing of QCR's waitlist but it isn't expected to happen until the end of the week. Not sure why it takes so long. I suppose they are contacting each team and asking them if they want in, and then waiting for a reply.

[dodar]

That's not really a logical answer. Michigan and MAR already have a very good to excellent method for ranking teams. Two qualifying events (24 qualification matches and eliminations) that feed into a region championship. Telling teams to spend the time and money to go to another event isn't the easy answer.

We were one of the (18?) teams that attended 5 events last year, and it was draining. Two MAR districts, Montreal, MAR CMP, and World CMP. That was $18,000 in registration alone. Thanks to our hard work, excellent sponsors, and school district we were able to manage that, but we're not the norm in that regard. We could have skipped MAR CMP since we won at Montreal, but had we not been lucky in that regard it's a mandatory 4 events before you can qualify for CMP.

You can also be an excellent team and not manage to get lucky enough to win a regional. Look at 118 this year, they had to win their 3rd and final regional to get a bid for CMP, and they were easily one of the top 10 robots in FIRST.

The easy solution is to adjust the number of bids to be proportional to the number to teams as a region grows. Michigan and MAR are the guinea pigs here, and it's tricky since everyone else is still in the regional system. I think the intent was to keep the same number of slots as there were in the regional system, so MAR got 12 as Philadelphia and NJ were dropped in the transition to MAR. MAR grew by 10 teams this year (99 to 109), so we now have 1 CMP slot for every ~9.1 teams. Michigan has 1 CMP slot for every ~11.4 teams (18 for 206 teams).

It's not a direct comparison, but California is close to Michigan in size (216 teams), and has 6 Regional events. No idea about waitlists, but right now those 6 events have 320 teams registered, or 1 slot for every 8.9 teams competing (53 team/event average). Competing in Michigan is roughly equivalent to attending a 68 team regional, with teams that are significantly better than average.

Yes it is. Every other team that competes in FIRST has to either win their regional or win an award that merits a CMP slot. FiM and MAR teams get 2x the chances to get to CMP than everyone else. You guys dont have to win your competitions to go to the region championships where you can still win slots or you can go OOR to play somewhere else and still win and get in.

[Travis Hoffman]

I found out that Susan, RD for Ohio, has authorized the clearing of QCR's waitlist but it isn't expected to happen until the end of the week. Not sure why it takes so long. I suppose they are contacting each team and asking them if they want in, and then waiting for a reply.

I was given a similar answer for New York City's waitlist.

I expect this answer might be similar for most events.

[Nemo]

Yes it is. Every other team that competes in FIRST has to either win their regional or win an award that merits a CMP slot. FiM and MAR teams get 2x the chances to get to CMP than everyone else. You guys dont have to win your competitions to go to the region championships where you can still win slots or you can go OOR to play somewhere else and still win and get in.

Similarly, your team can go to (and pay for) a 2nd or 3rd or 4th regional if you want another chance to qualify.

In my opinion, Michigan has a pretty good point. It would be fair to increase the number of qualifying teams from that region.

[Jared Russell]

FiM and MAR teams get 2x the chances to get to CMP than everyone else.

I am trying to figure this out, but not succeeding. How do you figure? Much was just posted about the number of qualification spots in FIM/MAR compared to an equivalent regional. Most regions of the country feature more qualification spots per team than in the district areas.

Furthermore, it takes FIM/MAR teams a minimum of 3 events (2 districts + Region CMP, though one could technically opt to skip one district) to qualify for the World Championship. That's 3 weeks out of 7 that are not available to attend an outside competition, and if you want to minimize the number of back to back competitions, it REALLY limits your options. Add to that the fact that because of the district system, you need to travel a potentially long ways to find another Regional.

[PVCpirate]

Michigan should get more CMP slots, but it shouldn't be done strictly by percentage of Michigan teams in FRC = percentage of Michigan teams at CMP, simply because that's not how it's done anywhere else. 6 teams qualify at a regional regardless of the size of the regional. I would think a fair way to do it(for Michigan and MAR) would be to come up with a number of teams for an "average regional", and base the numbers on that. For example, if we say the average regional has 50 teams and Michigan has 216 teams, 216/50 = about 4 average regionals, 6x4=24 slots.

[Clinton Bolinger]

FiM and MAR only get 2x the chances IF they go out of state.

Last year only 4.7% (Total of 9) of Michigan teams went out of state. Only one of those teams (27) won an award (they won EI) that got them to the Championship without the need to go to MSC. However, RUSH also won the MSC Chairman's award that also guaranteed them a spot for Champs.

If non-FiM teams go to the same number of events as a FiM team that goes to 2 districts and MSC. Those teams technically get 3x the chances to make it to the Champs. Not to mention the level of competition at a regional vs MSC.

-Clinton-

[Nuttyman54]

Michigan should get more CMP slots, but it shouldn't be done strictly by percentage of Michigan teams in FRC = percentage of Michigan teams at CMP, simply because that's not how it's done anywhere else. 6 teams qualify at a regional regardless of the size of the regional. I would think a fair way to do it(for Michigan and MAR) would be to come up with a number of teams for an "average regional", and base the numbers on that. For example, if we say the average regional has 50 teams and Michigan has 216 teams, 216/50 = about 4 average regionals, 6x4=24 slots.

This is exactly it. When Michigan went to districts in 2009, they were given the equivalent number of slots as they had previously with regionals. 3 regionals x 6 slots = 18 slots. I believe MAR did the same thing when they started.

What hasn't been addressed with the district system yet is how that increases with team growth. Michigan has many more teams now than when they started, and had they still been in a regional setup, they probably would have added at least one, maybe two more regionals by now, because the team base has grown and can support it. Right now they're still stuck with the same 3-regional equivalent. Fast growing regions like Texas, California and Washington have all expanded their events:

Texas: 2009 - 2 events, 2013 - 3 events
California: 2009 - 4 events, 2013 - 6 events
Washington: 2009 - 1 event, 2013 - 3 events

This means that those states/regions are qualifying more teams through regionals than they were several years ago, proportional to the team growth in the state. Michigan is not, because they have been fixed at 18 slots since 2009, regardless of the team growth and increase in the number of districts in the state.

[Hallry]

FiM and MAR only get 2x the chances IF they go out of state.

Last year only 4.7% (Total of 9) of Michigan teams went out of state. Only one of those teams (27) won an award (they won EI) that got them to the Championship without the need to go to MSC. However, RUSH also won the MSC Chairman's award that also guaranteed them a spot for Champs.

If non-FiM teams go to the same number of events as a FiM team that goes to 2 districts and MSC. Those teams technically get 3x the chances to make it to the Champs. Not to mention the level of competition at a regional vs MSC.

-Clinton-

FiM and MAR teams would have two chances to get to Champs, only if they go out of their region. But teams that go to two regionals (which is most) have two chances as well. Only 10 teams are signed up for out-of-region competitions for 2013 out of the 109 MAR teams. That's just 11%.


Some might argue that MAR teams get an additional (third) chance since the MAR Regional took 12 spots from the combined NJ and Philly Regionals, but one must remember that they are competing there against TWICE the usual amount of teams, and also that the qualifying spots are distributed differently. Three winners, two Chairmans, but only 1 EI, 1 R.A.S., and then the 5 next highest ranked teams.

[Mark McLeod]

But teams that go to two regionals (which is most) ...
Um, no. This is a false statement.
What did you use as the basis for this?


I imagine as District systems become more prevalent, the system must eventually be based on percentage of overall FRC team population.
To give one area more slots, means that some other area must lose slots.
Regionals as an entity unto themselves would need adjustment to qualify fewer teams.
You can't just think to add slots-poor economics.

[Hallry]

Um, no this is a false statement.
What did you use as the basis for this?

Whoops, my apologies. I misread the data that was posted earlier. I retract that statement.

Speaking of that, Mark, do you have any updated info of what percentage of teams are going to each number of competitions (1 event, 2 events, etc.)? Specifically, teams not in district models? I know the percentage of MAR teams attending outside regionals is 10.9%, and I don't believe any are signed up for more than 2 districts.

But just me thinking (specifically about MAR):

*MAR teams have two sets of regional spots to qualify for Champs, but they are distributed differently. Also, there is about twice the teams competing for them. And, as has happened in FiM, as time goes on, there will be more teams competing for the same limited number of spots.
*Yes, MAR teams have the chance to go out of chance to an outside regional to increase their chances. But, don't all teams have the ability to attend more competitions (of course budget ranges in all teams)?

[Jon Stratis]

Fast growing regions like Texas, California and Washington have all expanded their events:

Texas: 2009 - 2 events, 2013 - 3 events
California: 2009 - 4 events, 2013 - 6 events
Washington: 2009 - 1 event, 2013 - 3 events

This means that those states/regions are qualifying more teams through regionals than they were several years ago, proportional to the team growth in the state. Michigan is not, because they have been fixed at 18 slots since 2009, regardless of the team growth and increase in the number of districts in the state.

You left Minnesota off your list... 2 events in 2009, 4 events in 2013. I firmly believe we'll move to a district model sometime in the next couple of years. I doubt it'll happen for 2014 though - we need to build up the volunteer base a lot more to support the number of events a district system has. Maybe after we add one or two more regionals!

[PVCpirate]

To give one area more slots, means that some other area must lose slots.
Regionals as an entity unto themselves would need adjustment to qualify fewer teams.
You can't just think to add slots-poor economics.

Wow, thanks for bringing us back to reality. When you think about it that way, it would seem like FIRST's hands are tied. No one wants to take away the championship qualification from one of the regional awards, but with the end of open Championship registration, it looks like FIRST thinks 400 teams is already too many. I would agree that this type of change will probably come with the addition of more district systems.

[Clinton Bolinger]

To give one area more slots, means that some other area must lose slots.
Regionals as an entity unto themselves would need adjustment to qualify fewer teams.
You can't just think to add slots-poor economics.

Currently the 400 spots at championship does not have this issue (yet).

2013 Total Events = 76
2013 FiM Events = 11
2013 MAR Events = 7
2013 Regionals = 58 = 76-11-7

Slots at Champs = 400
FiM CMP Slots = 18
MAR CMP Slots = 12
Regional Slots = 348 = 58 * 6
Remaining Slots = 22 = 400-348-18-12

But we are approaching that point very soon.

-Clinton-

[Jared Russell]

Currently the 400 spots at championship does not have this issue (yet).

2013 Total Events = 76
2013 FiM Events = 11
2013 MAR Events = 7
2013 Regionals = 58 = 76-11-7

Slots at Champs = 400
FiM CMP Slots = 18
MAR CMP Slots = 12
Regional Slots = 348 = 58 * 6
Remaining Slots = 22 = 400-348-18-12

But we are approaching that point very soon.

-Clinton-

+17 Hall of Fame
+ 5 Original and sustaining teams (not already in the Hall of Fame)
=
400

We're there. In fact, we're over capacity given the 2012 Einstein resolution. Only declines and double qualification will keep it at or under 400.

[dcarr]

+17 Hall of Fame
+ 5 Original and sustaining teams (not already in the Hall of Fame)
=
400

We're there. In fact, we're over capacity given the 2012 Einstein resolution. Only declines and double qualification will keep it at or under 400.

And then Wildcards will push it right up again...

[Nuttyman54]

And then Wildcards may push it up to or over again...

Wildcards can't push it over, since they are simply taking the slot of a double-qualified team. It will reduce the number of "empty" slots due to double-qualified teams.

But the raw facts are that as it stands, close to 400 teams will qualify or have already qualified for Championships, without any waitlist or open registration.

[scottandme]

And then Wildcards may push it up to or over again...

Wildcards can only consume the slots allocated for in the math above, and only for teams that have previously won an event (not CA/RAS/EI). I forget the exact numbers, but FIRST published data that said the acceptance rate to attend CMP was much higher last year than previously seen. I think they said something like 85-90% of qualified teams ended up attending, which was higher than historical precedent suggested.

That's the likely cause for the elimination of open registration slots (along with general growing pains outlined above). FIRST wants to have a good idea of exactly how many qualified teams are going to attend before accepting non-award winners. Just like college acceptances and waitlists.

There are 33 teams currently registered for CMP (HOF, Sustaining, Einstein). There are 378 more spots possible across the 58 regionals/MI/MAR. So assuming that everyone accepts, the currently registered teams don't win a banner, and there are no double winners (CA/RAS/EI & Regional, etc), that's 411 teams. I may be fuzzy on the wildcard slots, but I think it only applies to a team that previously won an event, not preregistration or CA/EI/RAS.

I think we'll be comfortably under 400 teams qualifying, even a 90% conversion of those 378 possible slots gives us 373 teams at CMP. Then it all comes down to how many teams FIRST actually wants at CMP.

Does anyone have data (Mark?) for how many teams preregistered for CMP last year?

[dcarr]

Wildcards can't push it over, since they are simply taking the slot of a double-qualified team. It will reduce the number of "empty" slots due to double-qualified teams.

But the raw facts are that as it stands, close to 400 teams will qualify or have already qualified for Championships, without any waitlist or open registration.

What I meant but not what I wrote :)

[Mark McLeod]

Does anyone have data (Mark?) for how many teams preregistered for CMP last year?
142, but many of those pre-registered teams actually dropped out.
So really, 113 teams that competed at Championship pre-registered, some were HOF, original/sustaining teams, previous year's champs, and many others later qualified through competition.

P.S.
A little more detail for those interested in this sort of thing:

31 of the 113 pre-registered teams ended up also qualifying through competition or as HOF, etc.
82 pre-registered teams (the rest of the 113) got to CMP without otherwise qualifying.
95 teams were pulled from the waitlist without otherwise qualifying.So 177 non-qualifying teams went to Championships.
If we apply that to this season (and I haven't miscounted something)...
177 (slots)
- 9 for extra Einstein teams
- 48 = 8*6 for new Regionals
----------------------
120 teams may get in off the waitlist (give or take circumstances).

[AlexD744]

I have a feeling that due to the ending of open registration, acceptance rates for Championship will climb even higher. Imagine being faced with the decision to go or not go when you can't just register again next year. Albeit, not every team will accept, but I bet it will be over 90%.

[Mark McLeod]

Registration for a third MAR District opened yesterday.
Seems to be lots of room available, but since all but one event is at the waitlist stage, I suppose that the RD will be filtering teams onto the event lists.

Only one team (1279) appeared on a third event so far. That seems to be because they signed up for the sole remaining District that hasn't reached initial capacity and so got right on the list.

Three teams (1617,2070, 4373) are still only shown as registered for a single District event.
For comparison, FiM has 80 teams that haven't been assigned a second District event yet.

[Mark McLeod]

... do you have any updated info of what percentage of teams are going to each number of competitions (1 event, 2 events, etc.)? Specifically, teams not in district models? I know the percentage of MAR teams attending outside regionals is 10.9%, and I don't believe any are signed up for more than 2 districts.


Sorry, I got distracted by Xmas shopping and forgot to respond to this question.

For ALL events (Regional/District/CMP) these are the current counts (give or take - event lists are still volatile) :
Note: not all District teams are registered for two events yet.

4 events - 13 teams (0.5%)
3 events - 57 teams (2.2%)
2 events - 782 teams (30.4%)
1 event - 1717 teams (66.8%)For Regional-Only teams:

4 events - 6 (0.3%)
3 events - 41 (1.8%)
2 events - 580 (25.7%)
1 event - 1626 (72.2%)

[PVCpirate]

Wildcards can only consume the slots allocated for in the math above, and only for teams that have previously won an event (not CA/RAS/EI)... I may be fuzzy on the wildcard slots, but I think it only applies to a team that previously won an event, not preregistration or CA/EI/RAS.

You're close. First, a team must qualify for the Championship this season, meaning they win an event or one of the qualifying awards. Then, they must be a winner of a subsequent event, which triggers the wildcard process, in which a Championship bid is extended to one finalist team. This will usually be the alliance captain, but will move to the first pick if the alliance captain has themselves already qualified for Championships, and can further move down to the other finalists for the same reason. Only one finalist team can get this bid, and if that team declines it, the wildcard slot goes unused. Hope that clears things up a little.

[dcarr]

Only one finalist team can accept this bid

Where did you get that from? I don't see it detailed here:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-Wild-Card-Slots-for-the-2013-FIRST-Championship

[PVCpirate]

Where did you get that from? I don't see it detailed here:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-Wild-Card-Slots-for-the-2013-FIRST-Championship
From that blog post:
If a team who wins a Regional in 2013 – in other words, if a team who is a member of the Winning Alliance – has already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013, a ‘Wild Card’ slot is created at the Regional which they just won. Wild Card slots are filled in the order of Finalist Alliance Captain, Finalist First Pick, Finalist Second Pick, and Finalist Backup Team. Wild Card slots are passed to the next team in order only if the team occupying that Wild Card slot has, itself, already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013. The number of potential Wild Card slots created at each Regional is equal to the number of teams on the winning alliance who had already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013. Only teams on the Finalist Alliance are eligible for Wild Card slots. It’s possible for a Wild Card slot to go unused, and unused Wild Card slots will not be replaced or backfilled.
(Emphasis mine)
What I meant was if 1 already-qualified team wins the event, only 1 team is given the opportunity to go to Championships. This team is the first finalist team which has not yet qualified, going in order from alliance captain to backup team. Since the slot only gets passed down the order for this reason, if the slot is offered to the alliance captain, the other teams on the alliance cannot get it, even if the alliance captain declines to attend.

[dcarr]

From that blog post:

(Emphasis mine)
What I meant was if 1 already-qualified team wins the event, only 1 team is given the opportunity to go to Championships. This team is the first finalist team which has not yet qualified, going in order from alliance captain to backup team. Since the slot only gets passed down the order for this reason, if the slot is offered to the alliance captain, the other teams on the alliance cannot get it, even if the alliance captain declines to attend.

Right. I just misunderstood what you said, my bad.

[rachelholladay]

Sorry, I got distracted by Xmas shopping and forgot to respond to this question.

For ALL events (Regional/District/CMP) these are the current counts (give or take - event lists are still volatile) :
Note: not all District teams are registered for two events yet.

4 events - 13 teams (0.5%)
3 events - 57 teams (2.2%)
2 events - 782 teams (30.4%)
1 event - 1717 teams (66.8%)For Regional-Only teams:

4 events - 6 (0.3%)
3 events - 41 (1.8%)
2 events - 580 (25.7%)
1 event - 1626 (72.2%)

Just curious, of the regional only teams, which 6 teams are going to 4 events? (I would assume many of those would be 3 regional + CMP)

[scottandme]

Just curious, of the regional only teams, which 6 teams are going to 4 events? (I would assume many of those would be 3 regional + CMP)

Easy enough to figure out by looking at the CMP team list. It's actually up to 7 "regional only" teams attending 4 events.

16, 118, 148, 233, 359, 1114, 2056

[Nuttyman54]

Easy enough to figure out by looking at the CMP team list. It's actually up to 7 "regional only" teams attending 4 events.

16, 118, 148, 233, 359, 1114, 2056

3 of those 7 teams are all going to be at SVR week six...wow

[Gregor]

Easy enough to figure out by looking at the CMP team list. It's actually up to 7 "regional only" teams attending 4 events.

16, 118, 148, 233, 359, 1114, 2056

These are not regional only teams. They are attending champs.

[Nuttyman54]

These are not regional only teams. They are attending champs.

He means all regionals+CMP, as opposed to teams in a district system.

[AlexD744]

3 of those 7 teams are all going to be at SVR week six...wow

This regional better have a webcast, otherwise, I would consider flying across the country to see it (only mostly joking haha). A showdown between 254, 233, 148, 118, 973 and 971 should be absolutely epic! Not to mention the other 52 teams there!

For some interesting stats (note: taken from FIRST site which tends to have some erroneous data, but should be close enough). Between these six teams there are:
55 Regional Wins
21 Regional Finalists
14 Division Wins
5 Championship Wins

Incredible!

[DonRotolo]

An interesting point is raised: what would be an equitable method of allocating CMP slots to a district? Right now we have only 2 district systems, but what happens when there are a dozen? Are districts like FIM doomed to be forever frozen to three regionals' worth of slots?

C'mon, we're smart people, surely we can solve this?

[Littleboy]

Once everyone is at a district system, I say we go by proportions. These proportions can change throughout time.
For example MI has 207 out of 2560 teams (8.086%). Besides the teams that already qualified for things such as Einstein 2012, HoF, sustaining teams, etc, there is 367 slots. In a perfect world, we should also get that percentage of teams at CMP. This year, we would get about 30 teams plus pre-qualified teams.
That number looks much better than the 18 we currently get.

Now on the other hand, CA would get fewer spots. Under that same system, they would have 31 spots. This is fewer than their current 36.

[MARS_James]

An interesting point is raised: what would be an equitable method of allocating CMP slots to a district? Right now we have only 2 district systems, but what happens when there are a dozen? Are districts like FIM doomed to be forever frozen to three regionals' worth of slots?

C'mon, we're smart people, surely we can solve this?

I made a chart of how many slots each area would have if we went district. The number of slots is calculated taking away Hall Of Fame teams, The previous years winners, engineering inspiration award winner, and teams sustaining since 1992

[Billfred]

An interesting point is raised: what would be an equitable method of allocating CMP slots to a district? Right now we have only 2 district systems, but what happens when there are a dozen? Are districts like FIM doomed to be forever frozen to three regionals' worth of slots?

C'mon, we're smart people, surely we can solve this?

Simple: Your district's size relative to the entire FRC population in 2013 dictates the number of Championship slots available in 2014 (provided that awards that would qualify a team at a traditional regional will get you through to Championship all the same).

Now, when there are so many districts that 6*regions is greater than the reasonable capacity of Championship...we'll have to have a long look in the mirror.

[Richard Wallace]

I made a chart of how many slots each area would have if we went district. The number of slots is calculated taking away Hall Of Fame teams, The previous years winners, engineering inspiration award winner, and teams sustaining since 1992
Nice work.

You could add two columns fairly easily, I think. One that shows the number of CMP slots allocated to each area now, and one that shows the difference between an all-district allocation and the one we have now.

[MARS_James]

Nice work.

You could add two columns fairly easily, I think. One that shows the number of CMP slots allocated to each area now, and one that shows the difference between an all-district allocation and the one we have now.

I will do that now should be done by tomorrow morning the earliest

[Littleboy]

There is (and has been for several days now) 207 teams in MI. That extra team would bump us up to 30 teams.
Also, in CA, there are 6 regionals, not 4.

[MARS_James]

There is (and has been for several days now) 207 teams in MI. That extra team would bump us up to 30 teams.
Also, in CA, there are 6 regionals, not 4.

I just checked again on the first website and you are sitting at 206 teams still, but you are right about California so I have changed it accordingly

So most gained:
Michigan: 11
Mexico and South America: 6

Most Lost:
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec: 7
Arizona, Nevada, Utah: 7
Ontario: 6

[Littleboy]

Huh, one must have dropped out between this afternoon and now. Wonder who.

[JB987]

Looks like FIRST has been busy brainstorming reconfigurations. Check out slide 8...

http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/ (http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/)

Not crazy about what appears to be a disproportionate allocation of CMP slots for international teams in the near future.

[Kpchem]

Looks like FIRST has been busy brainstorming reconfigurations. Check out slide 8...

http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/ (http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/)

Not crazy about what appears to be a disproportionate allocation of CMP slots for international teams in the near future.

What scares me more than anything else about that model is the number of events it would require teams to attend. Under this system, a team that attends CMP is looking at five events. 2 districts + district CMP + SuperRegional + CMP. I understand that there are teams that do it right now, but IIRC fewer that number is below 10 teams, and most of those do it by choice (i.e.: MI/MAR teams that choose to go to an outside regional), and this new systems has over 200 teams doing that.

That's a lot of time for students and mentors to miss, no matter how you look at it.

Having said that, I like the idea of a smaller 240 team CMP. It leads to having divisions where you can actually play with/against most of the other teams, which you can't currently do now with 100 team divisions.

[AlexD744]

Looks like FIRST has been busy brainstorming reconfigurations. Check out slide 8...

http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/ (http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/)

Not crazy about what appears to be a disproportionate allocation of CMP slots for international teams in the near future.

My question is, how big are these super regional's that they will have 54 teams from them moving on to the championship/how are they going to decide which 54 teams? Are we sure that the super-regional is an event? It could just be a geographical labeling used to separate teams in an organized manner, I feel like that makes a lot more sense.

[MARS_James]

Not crazy about what appears to be a disproportionate allocation of CMP slots for international teams in the near future.

Well considering that international teams include Canada it is not as bad as it seems.

EDIT:
Also what is a flex event?
and It says no changes in awards/medals I am pretty sure that we have had a lot of complaints about how wimpy the district trophies are....

[rsisk]

flex events are lower cost regionals. They may be held in a high school, the A/V cost/standards are lowered, in the past they would have been B&T vs ship.

[OZ_341]

Another issue with a Super Regional concept is that teams will find out very late in the season that they qualify.
I know this still happens now for late qualifying teams at Week 6 & 7 events, but not for every team. Imagine 200 or so teams struggling to find registration money, make travel arrangements and notifying school boards at the end of Week 7, just 10 days before they have to travel out of state.

This problem was reality last year, for late qualifying MAR teams and would have to be solved before we scale it up for 240 teams.

[MARS_James]

Here is something funny, the totals on the chart are for 2011 with 2013 numbers I believe:

North Super Regional: 704 Teams
East Super Regional: 560 Teams
South Super Regional: 515 Teams
West Super Regional: 551 Teams

I am pretty sure at almost 1/3 of teams the North Super Regional needs to have teams redistributed

[Nemo]

It might be possible to move a state or two into a neighboring region, but I think it would be better to award championship spots proportionally instead of awarding exactly 54 per super regional.

Here is something funny, the totals on the chart are for 2011 with 2013 numbers I believe:

North Super Regional: 704 Teams
East Super Regional: 560 Teams
South Super Regional: 515 Teams
West Super Regional: 551 Teams

I am pretty sure at almost 1/3 of teams the North Super Regional needs to have teams redistributed

[Doug G]

Another issue with a Super Regional concept is that teams will find out very late in the season that they qualify.
I know this still happens now for late qualifying teams at Week 6 & 7 events, but not for every team. Imagine 200 or so teams struggling to find registration money, make travel arrangements and notifying school boards at the end of Week 7, just 10 days before they have to travel out of state.

This problem was reality last year, for late qualifying MAR teams and would have to be solved before we scale it up for 240 teams.

This is normal for high school athletics who find out at the end of their season they qualify to go to state championships...

I do think the current timeline for FIRST will have to change... Maybe Championships in June after school gets out? As it is now, many of my team members won't go to the CMP (if we make it there), simply because AP testing is so close.

[PVCpirate]

This is normal for high school athletics who find out at the end of their season they qualify to go to state championships...

In most places, going to the state championship does not involve coming up with $4000, transportation to and from another state for students and a robot, and 2-3 nights at a hotel. There is also typically not a national or world championship for high school sports. FIRST is entirely different in this regard.

[DonRotolo]

That's a lot of time for students and mentors to miss, no matter how you look at it.
Actually, it turns out that our kids missed fewer school days last year than ever before. Both MAR districts we attended were Sat-Sun events (no days missed), NYC Regional was Fri-Sat-Sun (1 day missed for core group only), MAR DCMP had them missing 2 days, and CMP had them missing 3 days - total 5 or 6 days for 5 events.

With this new super-regional concept, tied with a district model, one might imagine more Sat-Sun events.
Maybe Championships in June after school gets out? Some schools would not permit school travel when school is not in session. But I could imagine mid-May as being a viable option.

[Steven Donow]

Actually, it turns out that our kids missed fewer school days last year than ever before. Both MAR districts we attended were Sat-Sun events (no days missed), NYC Regional was Fri-Sat-Sun (1 day missed for core group only), MAR DCMP had them missing 2 days, and CMP had them missing 3 days - total 5 or 6 days for 5 events.

With this new super-regional concept, tied with a district model, one might imagine more Sat-Sun events.
Some schools would not permit school travel when school is not in session. But I could imagine mid-May as being a viable option.

The problem with mid-May is AP Exams. I think no matter when thigns are scheduled, there will always be some sort of conflict.

[pathew100]

You left Minnesota off your list... 2 events in 2009, 4 events in 2013. I firmly believe we'll move to a district model sometime in the next couple of years. I doubt it'll happen for 2014 though - we need to build up the volunteer base a lot more to support the number of events a district system has. Maybe after we add one or two more regionals!

Regarding the volunteers, it can happen. When Michigan switched to districts they went from 3 regionals to 6 districts and the state championship.

Michigan requires all teams to supply 2 volunteers to an event each season (It does not have to be events you are participating in as a team).

[Mark McLeod]

So, Bedford is the newest Michigan District to take up the growth to FiM 209 teams.

A Friday/Saturday event though: 05-Apr - 06-Apr-2013

Bedford High School
8285 Jackman Road
Temperance, MI

[Doug G]

Some schools would not permit school travel when school is not in session. But I could imagine mid-May as being a viable option.

No school travel when not in session? About every school in our area does athletic camps and summer camps and leadership camps during the summer. Many of them are overnight and out of town. I think it is very doable.

[Mark McLeod]

Registration is at 2555 2556 and still changing now that FIRST staff are back from the holiday break. One Western Canada Regional rookie team dropped out this morning, and Peachtree added one.

The peak was 2571 registered teams, before it fell back.
A rough estimate of 400 event slots are open and unassigned. The districts haven't filled their double rosters yet though.

The smallest Regionals are Waterloo and Western Canada at 30 teams each.

Here are some registration charts to play with.

[Mark McLeod]

I neglected to mention that FiM has rounded out their District team rosters.

[Racer26]

Interesting that the 2013 season holds the record for retention rate at present, as well as one of the highest year-over-year drops in Lost teams. I wonder what changed. Did JCP pull the plug for the 2012 season killing a disproportionately high number of teams or something?

[Jon Stratis]

Part of that could be the teacher strike issues in Canada... I just looked, and there are 42 Rookie teams, out of 128 total this year (The number I just pulled off FIRST's site is a little different from Mark's, not sure why), while Canada had 113 teams last year. That's 27 teams that dropped from last year (almost 25%!), but impressive growth in new teams at the same time! I would hope that, without the issues Canada has been going through this year, we would have had a lot more of those teams returning.

[Gregor]

Part of that could be the teacher strike issues in Canada... I just looked, and there are 42 Rookie teams, out of 128 total this year (The number I just pulled off FIRST's site is a little different from Mark's, not sure why), while Canada had 113 teams last year. That's 27 teams that dropped from last year (almost 25%!), but impressive growth in new teams at the same time! I would hope that, without the issues Canada has been going through this year, we would have had a lot more of those teams returning.

I'm afraid it isn't over yet. I still know of quite a few teams that are registered for regionals that wont be competing this year. Wonder when they will get pulled off.

[Racer26]

...wont be competing this year...

Not sure if its fair to call this or not yet. Back a group of dedicated teenagers far enough into a corner, and they're gonna find a way out.

[Nick Lawrence]

I've heard rumors of teams able to get waivers from the union to run this year, but I can't confirm the accuracy of that statement.

-Nick

[Racer26]

I've heard rumors of teams able to get waivers from the union to run this year, but I can't confirm the accuracy of that statement.

-Nick

If true, that would constitute a remarkable breakthrough.

[Mark McLeod]

NYC has cleared teams from it's waitlist.
Who out there is still hoping on a waitlist?

MAR has

3 teams that are still signed up for only a single District event
1 team signed up for three District eventsFiM has

2 teams signed up for only a single District event
No three District teams yet

[Wetzel]

NYC has cleared teams from it's waitlist.
Who out there is still hoping on a waitlist?

MAR has

3 teams that are still signed up for only a single District event
1 team signed up for three District eventsFiM has

2 teams signed up for only a single District event
No three District teams yet

NYC has moved all teams off the waitlist and into the event, or they have closed out the waitlist? I know of several DC teams that are still hoping to get into Baltimore as a second event, but were buried 10+ deep on the waitlist there as of a month ago.

Am I correct in that there is no way to see the size of waitlist at a regional or a way to search for regionals with open spots, other than clicking through to each regional in What Events are in my Area? I have several teams with the funding for a second regional for the first time, but are just sitting on a waitlist now, they (and I) don't know if they can/should blindly waitlist everywhere remotely possible or stay the course and hope for the more reasonable option an hour away.

Wetzel

[Hallry]

NYC has cleared teams from it's waitlist.
Who out there is still hoping on a waitlist?[/LIST]

We are! ...on NYC's =/. They still do have room though for up to 3 more teams (based on what the Regional Director told me, they have room for 66 in total, and there are 63 signed up currently).


NYC has moved all teams off the waitlist and into the event, or they have closed out the waitlist?


I'm hoping they're just pausing before moving more teams off, since there is still room available (hopefully).

[Travis Hoffman]

We are! ...on NYC's =/. They still do have room though for up to 3 more teams (based on what the Regional Director told me, they have room for 66 in total, and there are 63 signed up currently).

You have more patience than we do. That is why we're at FLR now. Good luck getting one of the final spots! :)

[Hallry]

You have more patience than we do. That is why we're at FLR now. Good luck getting one of the final spots! :)

Well, we really don't have any other choice. Since we're in MAR, we are signed up for two districts, both of which we aren't staying over for. That's why we loved NYC last year and wanted to go there again this year; it's only 45 minutes away, so there's no need to get a hotel. We can save our money to get a hotel for the MAR Championships and World Championships (hopefully). But besides for NYC, there isn't any other regional around us that we would be able to come home each night for.

But thanks for the good luck :).

[Mark McLeod]

Yea, there's no publicly perusable waitpool, since it's not a single ordered list anyway.
Only the Regional Director can say for sure if more space is available, but last year's capacity is usually a reasonably dependable guide.

Baltimore just moved in a couple of more teams off the waitlist this afternoon.

The Regionals still showing open slots that teams can get in right away are:

# slots - Regional
1-BAE Systems Granite State Regional
1-Northern Lights Regional
1-Festival de Robotique FRC a Montreal Regional
1-Bayou Regional
1-Boston Regional
1-Utah Regional
1-Wisconsin Regional
1-Razorback Regional
1-Hawaii Regional
2-Greater Toronto East Regional
3-Pine Tree Regional
3-Las Vegas Regional
4-Waterloo Regional
4-Buckeye Regional
5-South Florida Regional
5-Spokane Regional
12-Western Canadian FRC Regional
14-Greater Toronto West Regional

[DonRotolo]

Yea, there's no publicly perusable waitlist, since it's not a single ordered list anyway.I like the term "waitpool".

[Hallry]

Yea, there's no publicly perusable waitlist, since it's not a single ordered list anyway

Well, it is somewhat ordered. Rookies get first priority, and then it goes by teams registered for the least number of events.

[Mark McLeod]

7 Ontario teams just dropped out from these events:

7 Toronto East
1 Toronto West
1 Montreal
1 WaterlooA BC and MD team also dropped out.

[Racer26]

7 Ontario teams just dropped out from these events:

7 Toronto East
1 Toronto West
1 Montreal
1 WaterlooA BC and MD team also dropped out.

Which teams?

EDIT: Fair warning, I fear this may be only the first wave of withdrawals from Ontario teams.

[Gregor]

Which teams?

EDIT: Fair warning, I fear this may be only the first wave of withdrawals from Ontario teams.

Note, I took current team lists and compared them to the team lists used for Fantasy First, which were generated in December.

GTR East:
188
886
919
1219
1246
1605
2185
2198

Montreal:
1246

Waterloo:
188
4647
4677
4691

GTR West:
886
2185

Pity to see all these teams missing, in particular 188, a perennial powerhouse.

[PayneTrain]

Looks like FIRST has been busy brainstorming reconfigurations. Check out slide 8...

http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/ (http://www.nefirst.org/2012/07/28/town-hall-meeting-ct-recap/)

Not crazy about what appears to be a disproportionate allocation of CMP slots for international teams in the near future.

I had no idea that it was public that FIRST wanted to move over to the district system, it just seemed as obvious as gravity. I assume we will see a wave of regions switch over to the district model this offseason, which I suspected after seeing a quick first-year success with MAR on top of the continuing success in Michigan.

I think the idea of super regionals is frankly, a scary one. You would create massive scheduling nightmares and severely affect the average team's budget if they made it that far. At this point in time, it seems almost nebulous. For the time being you can still easily allocate slots to teams right off of their single or multi-state district competitions rankings. Don't go trying to turn FRC on its head, just direct it to a more sustainable growth model.

[Jon Stratis]

Don't expect to see it happen too terribly quickly, but I'm sure it will happen. There are potential issues with volunteers in the area if you suddenly have to support a larger number of district events (especially in the key volunteer roles like Lead Robot Inspector or Head Ref).

Next, how do you handle teams that don't easily fall into a region? There are still areas with very low FRC population density. For those areas, teams would need to travel for 2 district events, plus the district champs, plus champs, or find a regional farther away to attend. Today, they are likely traveling to their nearest regional, which could be in an area that could be converted to districts.

Based on the growth maps in the first post to this thread, there are clearly areas of the country where this wouldn't be much of an issue... but there are also areas where it would be.

[Mark McLeod]

Remembering that some team attrition is normal...
The Canadian teams missing now from last year are:

188 Toronto, ON, Canada
843 Oakville, ON, Canada
886 North York, ON, Canada
919 Toronto, ON, Canada
1009 North York, ON Canada
1053 Ottawa, ON, Canada
1219 Toronto, ON, Canada
1221 Mississauga, ON, Canada
1246 Scarborough, ON, Canada
1404 Toronto, ON, Canada
1514 Toronto, ON, Canada
1535 Sault Ste Marie, ON, Canada
1605 Toronto, ON Canada
1835 Toronto, ON, Canada
2076 Toronto, ON Canada
2185 Toronto, ON
2198 Toronto, ON, Canada
3531 Montreal, QC, Canada
3739 London, ON, Canada
3978 Montreal, QC Canada
3980 Montreal, QC Canada
4022 Waterdown, ON Canada
4062 Ste-Genevieve, QC Canada
4094 Angus, ON Canada
4147 Yarmouth, NS Canada
4236 mississauga, ON Canada
4248 Whitby, ON Canada
4249 Brampton, ON Canada
4250 Cobourg, ON Canada
4258 Markham, ON Canada
4307 Ajax, ON Canada
4308 Mississauga, ON Canada
4357 Port Hope, ON Canada
4367 Mississauga, ON Canada
　

A defunct veteran team tried to return but dropped:

2609 Guelph, ON Canada (last played in 2011)


Also rookies who registered then dropped out were from:

Calgary, AB Canada
Calgary, AB Canada
Westlock, AB Canada
Shawnigan Lake, BC Canada
Tecumseh, ON Canada
Richmond Hill, ON Canada
Mississauga, ON Canada

[Gregor]

Remembering that some team attrition is normal...


Thanks for these.

Keep in mind that any missing teams not located in Ontario are unaffected by the labour issues.

[Gregor]

Mark do you have numbers for teams lost in a specific region with the number of teams similar to the number of Canadian teams?

[Mark McLeod]

I can probably find a similar area team-#-wise, but I think using Ontario last year might have more relevance, due to economic/societal/government/union/etc. differences.

This year's Ontario team loss is quite a bit higher than last year - about 22% higher.

In 2012 there were 78 Ontario teams. An overall gain of 20% on the previous season.
10 teams were lost.
Between 2012 and 2013 there was only a one team difference in potential rookies dropping out, so that's probably not significant.
So, in Ontario that translates into a 15.4% loss of veteran teams in 2012. By the way, that was about 6% worse than the average veteran loss.

Currently, for 2013 there are 29 teams missing and 72 registered. An overall loss of 7.6%.
So in 2013 there is a 37.2% loss of veteran teams. Almost 29% worse than the across-the-board average veteran team loss of 8.5%.

The # of rookie teams was very similar- 21 in 2012 vs. 23 in 2013.

Here are the Ontario teams that didn't play in 2012, but did play in 2011:

1006 Port Perry, ON, Canada
1312 Walkerton, ON, Canada
2361 Richmond Hill, ON, Canada
2609 Guelph, ON, Canada
2670 Toronto, ON, Canada
3040 Toronto, ON, Canada
3563 Innisfil, ON, Canada
3590 Toronto, ON, Canada
3664 Burlington, ON, Canada
3698 Mississauga, ON, Canada



Almost 2012 rookies who didn't stick around:

Mississauga, ON Canada
Toronto, ON Canada

[Taylor]

According to their twitter account, 188 is back in business.

[Racer26]

According to their twitter account, 188 may be back in business.

Fixed it for you. I suspect they're working on the angle of getting a waiver from the union to participate that I've heard rumours of

[AcesPease]

Fixed it for you. I suspect they're working on the angle of getting a waiver from the union to participate that I've heard rumours of

It would be very sad if 188 is not able to compete. They are one of the Grand Old teams we have played with over the years, always a great example for other teams to follow.

[Donut]

Don't expect to see it happen too terribly quickly, but I'm sure it will happen. There are potential issues with volunteers in the area if you suddenly have to support a larger number of district events (especially in the key volunteer roles like Lead Robot Inspector or Head Ref).

Next, how do you handle teams that don't easily fall into a region? There are still areas with very low FRC population density. For those areas, teams would need to travel for 2 district events, plus the district champs, plus champs, or find a regional farther away to attend. Today, they are likely traveling to their nearest regional, which could be in an area that could be converted to districts.

Based on the growth maps in the first post to this thread, there are clearly areas of the country where this wouldn't be much of an issue... but there are also areas where it would be.

How FIRST handles less population dense areas will definitely be key to the success of the District system. Having lived in Arizona as FRC got started there and Iowa now I've gotten a front row seat to FRC when there aren't a huge amount of teams or events around. The northern plains (Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, western Kansas) and the mountain west (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming) don't have any events or many teams right now and have a substantial amount of distance to travel to the nearest events. Where we're at in Iowa there are about 5 events equal distance from us but all are a 4-5 hour drive to get to so we'd be looking at substantial travel time for a district system. The southwest (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, lumping in Utah since they have a regional) has clusters of teams and a handful of events but they are spaced 6+ hours apart. Assuming teams could not compete in the California district events Vegas and Phoenix are the best off since they are 5 hours apart (though a Tucson, AZ regional has been discussed), Denver is over 7 hours from the closest competition. Eliminating the entry fee for a 2nd event sure helps but I think we could see a lot of "skeleton crews" consisting of the drive team and 1 or 2 mentors attending events when these areas become part of a district due to the substantial travel costs. Either that or teams will just forgo the 2nd event entirely.

Short of "forcing" new events in these areas and hoping new teams start up with them I'm not sure how FIRST is going to effectively move the District system into these areas on their timeline. I think it can happen in the future but 2015 is an ambitious goal for these regions.

You left Minnesota off your list... 2 events in 2009, 4 events in 2013. I firmly believe we'll move to a district model sometime in the next couple of years. I doubt it'll happen for 2014 though - we need to build up the volunteer base a lot more to support the number of events a district system has. Maybe after we add one or two more regionals!

We could always try to add one in Southern Minnesota/Northern Iowa ;) If only there were teams there...

[GaryVoshol]

Where we're at in Iowa there are about 5 events equal distance from us but all are a 4-5 hour drive to get to so we'd be looking at substantial travel time for a district system. Remember that the district system comes with new district events. Perhaps your team could sponsor a district event, so your first event would have distance 0. That happened in MI - the first year we started districts, there was one in Traverse City. There were only 2 teams in town, and another handful within a 1-2 hour drive. Yet it served as a catalyst for growth. In a smaller town, a FRC event is a big media event, and it was well publicized. There are several teams now in NW Lower MI that were started since we went to districts.

Truly remote areas do have travel problems; our friends in the UP can attest to that. Districts are not the perfect solution, but something will have to be done as the number of FRC teams continues to grow. Districts provide capacity, and also provide for growth in areas that have few teams now. Why doesn't Iowa have a dozen or more teams?

[Nemo]

In my estimation, the district system doesn't have a major impact on driving distance from Iowa. We'd probably be going to Kansas City, St. Louis, etc, which are the same places we're going anyway.

I would be pretty happy to get into a district system because of the lower cost per event. I'd be sad to lose some of the current flexibility to travel in any direction to a regional event, but in the end we might retain that if everything goes district.

How FIRST handles less population dense areas will definitely be key to the success of the District system. Having lived in Arizona as FRC got started there and Iowa now I've gotten a front row seat to FRC when there aren't a huge amount of teams or events around. The northern plains (Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, western Kansas) and the mountain west (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming) don't have any events or many teams right now and have a substantial amount of distance to travel to the nearest events. Where we're at in Iowa there are about 5 events equal distance from us but all are a 4-5 hour drive to get to so we'd be looking at substantial travel time for a district system. The southwest (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, lumping in Utah since they have a regional) has clusters of teams and a handful of events but they are spaced 6+ hours apart. Assuming teams could not compete in the California district events Vegas and Phoenix are the best off since they are 5 hours apart (though a Tucson, AZ regional has been discussed), Denver is over 7 hours from the closest competition. Eliminating the entry fee for a 2nd event sure helps but I think we could see a lot of "skeleton crews" consisting of the drive team and 1 or 2 mentors attending events when these areas become part of a district due to the substantial travel costs. Either that or teams will just forgo the 2nd event entirely.

Short of "forcing" new events in these areas and hoping new teams start up with them I'm not sure how FIRST is going to effectively move the District system into these areas on their timeline. I think it can happen in the future but 2015 is an ambitious goal for these regions.



We could always try to add one in Southern Minnesota/Northern Iowa ;) If only there were teams there...

[PayneTrain]

Don't expect to see it happen too terribly quickly, but I'm sure it will happen. There are potential issues with volunteers in the area if you suddenly have to support a larger number of district events (especially in the key volunteer roles like Lead Robot Inspector or Head Ref).

Next, how do you handle teams that don't easily fall into a region? There are still areas with very low FRC population density. For those areas, teams would need to travel for 2 district events, plus the district champs, plus champs, or find a regional farther away to attend. Today, they are likely traveling to their nearest regional, which could be in an area that could be converted to districts.

Based on the growth maps in the first post to this thread, there are clearly areas of the country where this wouldn't be much of an issue... but there are also areas where it would be.

Right now there is an abstract "eye test" one could use to determine whether or not a given area has adequate density for the district system. A think an obvious case would be Georgia and the Carolinas, which is an area that supports 3 regionals that fill up very quickly and have a team population larger than MAR, but I don't know what, if any metric would be used to determine if that area would be dense enough. Sure ,some teams will have long travel times, but so do some teams in FiM and MAR. I don't know the point at which it's too thin to be feasible.

I like to think at some point district events won't have to be tied into certain regional or state championships, but you register saying you want points to be tallied for eligibility for an available regional or state championship event so you can maintain flexibility some rural teams may need while still moving over to the low cost district format.

I feel like regions should be competing against each other to have the best representation possible at CMP. When MAR and MSC teams are playing twice as many matches as my team for the same price, I would like to do something to level that ASAP.

[PVCpirate]

A think an obvious case would be Georgia and the Carolinas, which is an area that supports 3 regionals that fill up very quickly and have a team population larger than MAR, but I don't know what, if any metric would be used to determine if that area would be dense enough.

I found that straight teams per square mile works well to compare two areas when I was seeing how New England measured up to Michigan. Doing a quick calculation for the area you described, the 3 states together have about .88 FRC teams per 1,000 square miles. In Michigan, the number is 2.16 teams per 1,000 square miles. While I wouldn't take that to directly translate to readiness to go to districts, it is definitely a factor.

[AcesPease]

I found that straight teams per square mile works well to compare two areas when I was seeing how New England measured up to Michigan. Doing a quick calculation for the area you described, the 3 states together have about .88 FRC teams per 1,000 square miles. In Michigan, the number is 2.16 teams per 1,000 square miles. While I wouldn't take that to directly translate to readiness to go to districts, it is definitely a factor.

Ah now I see, I must have read too quickly.

[Mark McLeod]

I am a little confused. Is the density for New England higher if you include all six states?

Anthony's talking about down south, not New England:
A think an obvious case would be Georgia and the Carolinas, ...

[Libby K]

Next, how do you handle teams that don't easily fall into a region? There are still areas with very low FRC population density. For those areas, teams would need to travel for 2 district events, plus the district champs, plus champs, or find a regional farther away to attend. Today, they are likely traveling to their nearest regional, which could be in an area that could be converted to districts.

Based on the growth maps in the first post to this thread, there are clearly areas of the country where this wouldn't be much of an issue... but there are also areas where it would be.

This is a problem we have with 229 and 4124 at Clarkson.

Tab over really quick and google-map "Potsdam, NY". We normally attend either Rochester, or a New England event, because those are the things in the closest driving distance - Rochester is 4 and Manchester is 5 - (barring Canada- of which Montreal is 1 hour away, GTR E/W are 5 hours away...We have a lot of students who live on the reservation up here, and crossing the border can get very complicated)

Assuming New England and Rochester/Ohio each become districts of their own... We don't fall into either.

So, where do we go?

[PayneTrain]

I found that straight teams per square mile works well to compare two areas when I was seeing how New England measured up to Michigan. Doing a quick calculation for the area you described, the 3 states together have about .88 FRC teams per 1,000 square miles. In Michigan, the number is 2.16 teams per 1,000 square miles. While I wouldn't take that to directly translate to readiness to go to districts, it is definitely a factor.

The first year of FiM saw team density at 1.36 per 1000 sq mi for what it's worth, but I agree that might be one to look at. I guess another one might be # of teams located within an x-mile radius of a proposed venue.

[Donut]

I don't think I made this apparent in my post, but I am in favor of the District system. I want more matches. I want to attend multiple events. I want to see more teams in FIRST because the barrier to entry is lower. What I wanted to bring up though is that many of the benefits of going to a District system aren't there for rural teams or when clusters of teams are very far apart from each other. The District system may be new in name only if few of the teams in these areas can afford the travel costs to go to the 2nd event that they now have free entry into and it doesn't produce any closer events for them.

Remember that the district system comes with new district events. Perhaps your team could sponsor a district event, so your first event would have distance 0. That happened in MI - the first year we started districts, there was one in Traverse City. There were only 2 teams in town, and another handful within a 1-2 hour drive. Yet it served as a catalyst for growth. In a smaller town, a FRC event is a big media event, and it was well publicized. There are several teams now in NW Lower MI that were started since we went to districts.

...

Why doesn't Iowa have a dozen or more teams?

This was the only thing I could think of that FIRST could do right away to make Districts have a noticeable benefit in some of the more rural areas. I wasn't aware that they did that with success when FiM started, they may not need another strategy if that works as well in other regions.

The low quantity of teams in the Mountain West and Northern Plains is largely an issue of population and density. Iowa as a state has 3 million people and they're spread out over a fairly large region; a list of high school sizes I pulled up shows only 18 high schools with more than 1500 students and 42 high schools with more than 1000 students. If you had a FIRST team in every one of them it wouldn't be a problem but given the typical rate of FIRST teams relative to total high schools in a state the numbers just work out to a low total. The lower population density also means there are less businesses in any given area to be potential sponsors, and less potential mentors, etc.

Two things working in Iowa's favor:
1. Iowa launched (http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/iowa-includes-first-in-groundbreaking-legislation) a STEM initiative this year that more or less covers the cost of competition for FLL and FTC teams. There has been an explosion of growth in both of these programs in a few years, and I would suspect it could spill over into more FRC teams in the future.
2. Iowa has a really strong manufacturing base, so I feel that the percentage of the population that are engineers or some sort of skilled trade is higher than in some other states (just a personal observation).

I feel like regions should be competing against each other to have the best representation possible at CMP. When MAR and MSC teams are playing twice as many matches as my team for the same price, I would like to do something to level that ASAP.

Who doesn't want twice as much competition time? I'm all in for it.

In my estimation, the district system doesn't have a major impact on driving distance from Iowa. We'd probably be going to Kansas City, St. Louis, etc, which are the same places we're going anyway.

I would be pretty happy to get into a district system because of the lower cost per event. I'd be sad to lose some of the current flexibility to travel in any direction to a regional event, but in the end we might retain that if everything goes district.

For the current teams we have the District system would be nice as long as a few of the nearby events were options (this year all of the nearby events filled up before second regional registration opened). If students split up pretty evenly between the two events the travel costs would probably be about the same. I don't think the District system will start many new teams here unless a closer event ends up forming though.

[Karibou]

Tab over really quick and google-map "Potsdam, NY". We normally attend either Rochester, or a New England event, because those are the things in the closest driving distance - Rochester is 4 and Manchester is 5 - (barring Canada- of which Montreal is 1 hour away, GTR E/W are 5 hours away...We have a lot of students who live on the reservation up here, and crossing the border can get very complicated)

Assuming New England and Rochester/Ohio each become districts of their own... We don't fall into either.

So, where do we go?
Gary already mentioned this, but that sounds exactly like what happened to the teams in the UP of Michigan. From Houghton (farthest teams from the lower peninsula) to the Traverse City district is about 6 hours, and the next closest district is 8 hours.

As the district system expands, remote teams will have to go somewhere, and it probably won't work in their favor. It's not as big of an issue in MAR, since the region is small in size. When (if) larger states start moving to districts, it's going to be a more widespread issue, and there's no way to make it fair (easy travel) for everyone. The best thing that can be done is starting up district events farther away from the central "hub" of teams for the region (which is Metro Detroit, in Michigan), if possible - it encourages the other teams to travel and still gives students the opportunity to experience the fun of a travel event, which the district system has kind of taken away. And, as Gary mentioned, it encourages growth in the less dense areas.

[PVCpirate]

This is a problem we have with 229 and 4124 at Clarkson.

Tab over really quick and google-map "Potsdam, NY". We normally attend either Rochester, or a New England event, because those are the things in the closest driving distance - Rochester is 4 and Manchester is 5 - (barring Canada- of which Montreal is 1 hour away, GTR E/W are 5 hours away...We have a lot of students who live on the reservation up here, and crossing the border can get very complicated)

Assuming New England and Rochester/Ohio each become districts of their own... We don't fall into either.

So, where do we go?

There's been talk of allowing the teams from the Albany area of New York to join the New England district system, since some of them usually attend New England events. Seems like the obvious solution to teams with no local events, allow them to do what works best for them.

[Mark McLeod]

An update.
Currently showing 2548 teams.

Things have slowed, but not stopped.
Some events are still adding and dropping onesies/twosies.

Since formal registration closed on December 6...

37 new teams have added in - after Dec 6
20 of the post-Dec 6 added teams above are rookies
49 teams registered on Dec. 6 have dropped out

22 of these dropped teams from Dec. 6 were rookies
These numbers don't count some teams that added in after registration closed and then subsequently dropped out.

So, the registration total for this season has dropped by a dozen teams so far. Last night we did get two more teams though, so we're not done yet.

[Mark McLeod]

Looks like Lake Superior & Northern Lights just swapped 6 teams around (3 from each) to balance things out I suppose.

One pre-qualified team (842) dropped off the Championships team list.
I hope it's only temporary.

[Mark McLeod]

FiM has begun assigning third District slots by assigning 9 for the Bedford District (the one with all the space left).

One Michigan team dropped out of Waterford & Livonia to make it 208 Michigan teams this year.

Overall, FRC has 2540 registered teams right now.

[Mark McLeod]

Another team (23) dropped off the list for Championship.

The Michigan Bedford event is still being filled with 3rd district event teams.

Total teams has been unusually volatile after registration closing this year.
I'll add a graph later tonight.

[feverittm]

Mark,

Do you have an up-to-date spreadsheet with all the teams registered this year and the regional(s) they are registered to attend?

How would you compile this list? (easily, computer assisted)

Thanks

[Mark McLeod]

I have an up-to-date event team list, but not with me.
Ed Law usually publishes his, but he's probably waiting for Bedford to settle out: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2731

You can get the team list and other info. on an event basis if you have the event IDs. Then you can setup a macro to collect them all in Excel or another tool. I have to go looking for the Event IDs.
P.S. Event IDs:
https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/index.lasso?page=eventlist (https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/index.lasso?page=eventlist)

For example, here is the Long Island list:

https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/index.lasso?page=event_teamlist&ID_event=9011 (https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/index.lasso?page=event_teamlist&ID_event=9011)

[Mark McLeod]

Championship just lost another of the pre-qualified teams (548)

Do you still need teamlists by event, Floyd?
I mailed the latest to myself.

[Racer26]

Iiiiiinteresting about 548.

another place to see the event codes: frclinks.com

frclinks.com/e/<event code> gets you to the team list for each event.

[bduddy]

China is trying again this year at the Spokane Regional

Team Number: 4813
Team Name: shen zhen da da le le
Team Location: Shen zhen, GD China (shares a border with Hong Kong)
Rookie Season: 2013
Team Nickname: R2
Year - Event : 2013 Spokane Regional4813 is no longer registered (indeed, TBA now lists their team name as "NOT PAY FOR THIS TEAM", which is hardly a winning attitude). But two new Chinese teams have appeared, both registered for Hawaii - 4830 and 4831. 4830 possibly is the same thing as 4813, as they both list "Shen zhen da da le le" in their team name - maybe they made a mistake when registering (they didn't initially realize there was a regional in Hawaii? ;))

[Mark McLeod]

The team list dropped about 15 teams over the weekend.
There are now 2324 teams playing this season.

Correction, the new Beta Team list shows 2324 teams, but the FIRST database still has 2339 teams listed. I think I'll go with the database and take a look at what teams aren't showning up on the new Beta.
P.S. the Beta site seems to be built from older team/event lists. There are teams listed on it who aren't playing, and teams who are playing who aren't listed.

FIRST has a new Beta Teams & Events page
Positives:

Lists team nicknames
Searches for teams within x miles of a zipcodeNegatives:

Does not list the team name any longer
Now limited to listing 25 teams per page
Team count seems 15 teams short

[jawebste]

This is amazing ! Everytime I think about FRC statistics, I always go to the source and verify with Mark McLeod's stats !

ditto :o

[Mark McLeod]

Watch out for my typos though.

There are 2539 teams, although the new Beta Team list only shows 2324 (it's actually 215 teams off).

[Gary Dillard]

[strike] the Beta site seems to be built from older team/event lists. There are teams listed on it who aren't playing, and teams who are playing who aren't listed.


I think it's taken from some other database, not an earlier list (unless it was last year's list). We show up as registered for Smoky Mountain - we were waitlisted there but cleared Bayou first so we never showed up as attending (TIMS still has a line item for SMR for us, dropped and unpaid).

[Wetzel]

When I looked two days ago, DC showed a Turkish, an Israeli, and two Brazilian teams attending. Today it shows one Israeli and one Brazilian. It is a Beta.

Wetzel

[Mark McLeod]

2536 teams now registered.
We lost a few more.

The qualifiers from this past weekend of events have started to register for Championship.
There are now 39 teams registered.

[Mark McLeod]

2534 teams registered.

128 now registered for Championships.
12.5% of them are rookie teams.

[Mark McLeod]

A few more dropped out

2531 teams now.

187 registered for the Championship.

[brrian27]

What is the max number of teams that the championship event can hold?

[Wetzel]

What is the max number of teams that the championship event can hold?
400

[brrian27]

Thanks!

[PayneTrain]

What is the max number of teams that the championship event can hold?

400

This will be interesting to watch, because this year, I believe there are over 400 available merit-based or pre-qualified bids for CMP, so we may see some push there.

However, I'm sure there is a statistic available on % of teams who accept bids that would probably mean only 370 or some similar number of those slots are filled.

[brrian27]

So, in the hypothetical case of 370 registering, about 30 other teams would get in on the wait list?

[Mark McLeod]

Hypothetically speaking, that's the idea.
Just remember that FIRST has changed the # of teams admitted to Championship over the year's, so no guarantees on the total number that will be admitted.

Currently 245 teams are registered for Championship.

[scottandme]

Slightly educated guess, but CMP will likely be smaller this year than it was last year. It seems that FIRST was surprised by a higher than normal acceptance rate last year, and the end of open registration and the wild card system were an attempt to bring the number of teams back to the mid 300's.

2012 - 400
2011 - 352
2010 - 344
2009 - 348
2008 - 340
2007 - 344
2006 - 344
2005 - 340

Aside from that, the two district systems (FiM and MAR) had their CMP slots adjusted. From what I've heard, FIRST assigned slots to FiM and MAR based on the region population relative to total slots at CMP. FiM has 27 slots for 206 teams, and MAR has 14 slots for 109 teams. Assuming 2550 FRC teams, FiM represents about 8.1% of FRC teams, and MAR represents 4.3% of FRC teams. So for FiM and MAR to have 8.1% and 4.3% of the CMP slots, that suggests 330-340 teams at CMP this year.

Last year there were 100 teams per field, 9 matches per team, and 150 qualification matches total. Dropping to 90 teams per field allows 10 matches per team in the same 150 qualification matches. I would say 350-360 teams total sounds about right for this year. 2010 and 2011 had 10 qual matches per team.

The math for this year lines up almost perfectly with those guesses. As of this post there are 249 teams registered (week 5 qualifiers have until 5PM EST, so possibly add a couple more). There are 12 more regional events for a max of 72 teams, 14 MAR, and 27 FiM. That yields 362 teams assuming 100% acceptance.

[PVCpirate]

Does anyone have the acceptance rate from last year? I remember from the now removed blog post that it was somewhere around 80%, and previously it had been around 60%.

[Jared Russell]

Since the era of Championship waitlist registration may be gone for good, I think you'll continue to see a high acceptance rate.

Ex. "If my team wins a Regional in 2013, that may be our only chance to go to the Championship for years"

[scottandme]

Does anyone have the acceptance rate from last year? I remember from the now removed blog post that it was somewhere around 80%, and previously it had been around 60%.

Well, there have been 46 regionals so far - max 276 slots. I don't remember how many teams were pre-registered before the season, around 30? (HoF, sustaining, einstein 2012).

We're at 252 teams now, so we're seeing at least 80% acceptance (subtracting ~30 from that number for pre-qual teams). You would have to find the list of pre-registered teams and see if they qualified this season (killing a slot) to get the real number. For example 1114 and 2056 were both pre-registered, and they ate two (of the 276) slots by winning their first event, their later wins generated wildcard slots.

[cgmv123]

58 regionals * 6 spots/regional = 348 regional qualifiers + 27 FiM teams + 14 MAR teams + 17 HoF** + 6 sustaining teams** + 12 Einstein teams + 1 EI team = 425 potential championship slots

Double qualifying HoF, Sustaining and Einstein teams don't create Wild Card slots, so there shouldn't be any issues accommodating all the teams that want to go, even if it's all the teams that are eligible.

**191 is a Hall of Fame team (twice) and a sustaining team. They are counted as a Hall of Fame team for the purposes of this exercise.

[scottandme]

CMP registration for week 5 qualifiers ended about an hour ago, now at 262 teams.

So without going to the waitlist, that means CMP can hit a max of 375 teams (+72 Regional, +14 MAR, +27 FiM). It's likely a few of those slots will be killed by wasted wildcard slots (hello SVR/Vegas!), along a few regular declines.

I like the idea of 90 team divisions and jumping back to 10 matches in qualifications. Match turnaround might be a little longer than last year though, and CMP will probably have a high concentration of 30 point climbers.

I'm sure FIRST has a number in mind regardless, so whatever that is will determine if/when teams get pulled from the waitlist.

[Mark McLeod]

Does anyone have the acceptance rate from last year? I remember from the now removed blog post that it was somewhere around 80%, and previously it had been around 60%.

Here's the blog entry you were looking for (note that at the time it didn't include all acceptees from weeks 6 & 7):


This year we were already planning for a bigger and better Championship, but we were excited by an almost 85% registration rate for teams that earned slots at events.

264 registered teams now.

[Mark McLeod]

More team dropouts/noshows has brought the total number of teams this season down to:
2528

278 registered for Championship, but many of the winners from this past weekend aren't yet registered.

31 teams registered for MAR championship

55 teams registered for FiM championship


This is a very busy day at FIRST Finance, because qualifying teams are registering for all three upcoming championship events.

[IndySam]

Waitlist invites are being sent out. We got one.

[PayneTrain]

More team dropouts/noshows has brought the total number of teams this season down to:
2528


Is there any data you have that would suggest this is a high year for in-season team attrition? It feels high.

I imagine the waitlist this year has a particular level of "magic" involved. Is it likely it's case-by-case basis? I know 829 could be considered a "high priority" waitlist team seeing as it hasn't attended championships since 2010 and was a regional finalist two weeks ago.

[IndySam]

Is there any data you have that would suggest this is a high year for in-season team attrition? It feels high.

I imagine the waitlist this year has a particular level of "magic" involved. Is it likely it's case-by-case basis? I know 829 could be considered a "high priority" waitlist team seeing as it hasn't attended championships since 2010 and was a regional finalist two weeks ago.

We also registered for the waitlist the first second we were allowed too so I wouldn't yet read too much into it until we see what other teams get invites.

[brrian27]

I imagine the waitlist this year has a particular level of "magic" involved. Is it likely it's case-by-case basis? I know 829 could be considered a "high priority" waitlist team seeing as it hasn't attended championships since 2010 and was a regional finalist two weeks ago.

Well according to the FIRST website, the wait list is split in two sections: veterans who attended championships last year, and veterans who did not attend championships last year (with these being higher priority).

So yeah if you are on a waitlist and didn't go to St. Louis last year, you're in the first group. But in that group, I think the order is just when people signed up.

[dag0620]

I know my team 1071 got pulled off of the wait list. I'm hoping Mark can elaborate on the wait list more but teams are apparently getting pulled off.

[JB987]

Pulled off to attend or just removed from the list?

[dag0620]

Pulled off to attend Championships.

[Mark McLeod]

318 teams now registered for CMP (now including teams from the waitlist).

What I know or deduce about the Championship waitlist isn't official, so take it with a bit of skepticism.
It's based on what has been officially published about it, what has been observed to happen in previous years, and what evidence we have so far for this season.

It's a simple first-on, first-off waitlist for Championship.
No other considerations.

It's somewhat ordered, because registration for it originally opened only for those teams who had not attended Championships in 2012.

So, the first bunch of teams admitted from the waitlist will not have been at CMP last year.
I doubt many teams who waited to register, or who registered when it opened up 3 weeks later to teams who did attend last year, will get in.

It's easy to check who got in off the waitlist.

[Banderoonies]

320 teams as of 12:50 on 4/10/13 :)

I am trying to collect pictures of any robot that doesn't already appear on the FRC 2013 tracker app.
If you're reading this and want to check out the list, please share pics if you can...it helps everyone :)

[brrian27]

It's easy to check who got in off the waitlist.

What do you mean it's easy to check who got in on the waitlist?

[Clayton E]

Looks like 829 and 1071 got in through the wait list. Anyone else heard of other teams registering off the wait list so far?

[Banderoonies]

Seems only three were added today (4/11) I wonder if registration will go back down to traditional numbers (340 - 350) this season.

[Gregor]

Looks like 829 and 1071 got in through the wait list. Anyone else heard of other teams registering off the wait list so far?

217

[cgmv123]

I wonder if registration will go back down to traditional numbers (340 - 350) this season.

They're planning for 400 teams.

[PVCpirate]

I don't think they want 400 again, the general consensus I heard on CD was 100 teams per division was too many. That said, assuming 27 more FiM teams and 14 more MAR teams, we're at 366 right now, so already over 90 teams per division. I guess we'll see.

[BrendanB]

I don't think they want 400 again, the general consensus I heard on CD was 100 teams per division was too many. That said, assuming 27 more FiM teams and 14 more MAR teams, we're at 366 right now, so already over 90 teams per division. I guess we'll see.

My guess is FIRST will push for 400. If they have the space to hold 100 teams per division in the pits/stands and push the match schedule they will do it to include more teams.

I would be concerned if a possible 44 teams won't find out until after this weekend. That would be quite the last minute scramble to arrange travel to St. Louis.

[PayneTrain]

I think FIRST would push for at least 400 since there was a possibility (very small possibility that will not be met) that 425 teams could make it into CMP this year before they even hit the waitlist.

They are probably working on 100 teams/division right now and I would not be surprised if they ever added more teams and divisions if they moved it to a larger venue.

[Abhishek R]

They are probably working on 100 teams/division right now and I would not be surprised if they ever added more teams and divisions if they moved it to a larger venue.

Tesla Division :D ?

[Banderoonies]

Not sure they can add 70 plus teams in just 13 days.

[PayneTrain]

Not sure they can add 70 plus teams in just 13 days.

Up to 47 can be added after Week 7 events for merit-based slots alone. If FIRST wants to take teams off the waitlist up to 400 even in a short amount of time, I can guarantee you teams will find a way.

[PVCpirate]

I think FIRST would push for at least 400 since there was a possibility (very small possibility that will not be met) that 425 teams could make it into CMP this year before they even hit the waitlist.

They are probably working on 100 teams/division right now and I would not be surprised if they ever added more teams and divisions if they moved it to a larger venue.

I challenge you to find a larger venue. :D

[EricH]

I challenge you to find a larger venue. :D

Atlanta. Pits were in only one conference hall, of 3 possible ones, in any given year. And some of those halls could easily hold bleachers if needed, so if you really took over the space you could put 8 fields and 8 divisional pits in 3 conference halls and the Dome. Can't do that in St. Louis.

[dodar]

Atlanta. Pits were in only one conference hall, of 3 possible ones, in any given year. And some of those halls could easily hold bleachers if needed, so if you really took over the space you could put 8 fields and 8 divisional pits in 3 conference halls and the Dome. Can't do that in St. Louis.

That would probably be the biggest undertaking in Atlanta since the Olympics. You would take over the city of Atlanta.

[Racer26]

Or Orlando, where the largest convention center in the world is. You'd have to drop the 'domed stadium' aspect of it though.

[dodar]

Or Orlando, where the largest convention center in the world is. You'd have to drop the 'domed stadium' aspect of it though.

Even though that would be AMAZING, I wouldnt like the OCCC because it wouldnt have the "big time feel" like a major stadium does. Plus, the stadium seating, more often than not, has better seating than bleachers. Orlando would be a really good city for CMP though; tons of things to do, tons of hotels, and tons of restaurants. But I think Orlando is out of the question because FIRST tried Orlando for a few years at Epcot and they left for probably a good reason.

[Abhishek R]

George R. Brown Convention Center? The Lone Star Regional took up only one hall out of the several it has...or possibly Reliant Stadium/Center...

[dag0620]

But I think Orlando is out of the question because FIRST tried Orlando for a few years at Epcot and they left for probably a good reason.

What the location of events always comes down to, is the Venue. Now while I was a tike back then Epcot happened, I can tell you that the event just out grew the venue (among the other issues I know arose). It really wasn't an issue with the city, but there wasn't a good venue.

[EricH]

or possibly Reliant Stadium/Center... 2003 was NOT a good year to go to Championships. The pits were in the Astrodome, down all the ramps to the floor. The fields were 1/4 mile away in the Reliant, as the crow flies, but more like 1 mile as the robot cart rolls, up the ramps. Not to mention security around the venue generated quite a few lines for bag searches and the like.

I speak from experience.

[Abhishek R]

Well I know that, the Astrodome year sucked. I've heard enough stories about the nightmares of back then. Probably not the best idea to hold the Championships right after the Rodeo...

I still believe that the GRB would work.

[ebarker]

That would probably be the biggest undertaking in Atlanta since the Olympics. You would take over the city of Atlanta.

No way.

Atlanta can easily very handle it. GWCC hall 'C' can handle the 400 teams, plus all the other stuff like FLL, FTC, and vendors, scholarship row, etc, plus you have the dome for then fields. And there is still GWCC hall 'B' and hall 'A' if you really needed to expand.

And tons of hotel space. Sporting events like SEC championships, multiple college games, Braves, conventions, etc are here all the time, often simultaneously, and there are plenty of accommodations.

Transportation wise it could be argued that Atlanta is the 'center of the traveling US'. According to Airports Council International, Atlanta Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the world. Many people that would need to get to the geographical center of the US would have to travel through Atlanta to get there. 95 million or roughly 250K passengers a day go through the airport.

[dodar]

No way.

Atlanta can easily very handle it. GWCC hall 'C' can handle the 400 teams, plus all the other stuff like FLL, FTC, and vendors, scholarship row, etc, plus you have the dome for then fields. And there is still GWCC hall 'B' and hall 'A' if you really needed to expand.

And tons of hotel space. Sporting events like SEC championships, multiple college games, Braves, conventions, etc are here all the time, often simultaneously, and there are plenty of accommodations.

Transportation wise it could be argued that Atlanta is the 'center of the traveling US'. According to Airports Council International, Atlanta Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the world. Many people that would need to get to the geographical center of the US would have to travel through Atlanta to get there. 95 million or roughly 250K passengers a day go through the airport.

I never said it couldnt handle it. I meant it as an accomplishment. Everything that has happened in Atlanta, like you listed, and yet they would all pretty much be dwarfed in size by an 8 Field/Pit FIRST Championship. The population of Atlanta would probably grow by about 100,000 people for about a week. Oh, and you add into it the jrFLL, FLL, and FTC stuff that goes on at the same time. That maybe jumps it up to 125,000-150,000 in population growth. lol That's just an amazing thing to think about.

[PVCpirate]

Atlanta. Pits were in only one conference hall, of 3 possible ones, in any given year. And some of those halls could easily hold bleachers if needed, so if you really took over the space you could put 8 fields and 8 divisional pits in 3 conference halls and the Dome. Can't do that in St. Louis.

Interesting. I think the limiting factor then becomes time, since you would have to fit in 4 more eliminations series (World quarterfinals). Not saying it can't be done, it's just adding more matches to an already tight schedule.

[cgmv123]

Interesting. I think the limiting factor then becomes time, since you would have to fit in 4 more eliminations series (World quarterfinals). Not saying it can't be done, it's just adding more matches to an already tight schedule.

You'd have to extend Division eliminations to 4 or 5 PM and start Einstein at 7 or 8.

[nerdherdmember]

I imagine the waitlist this year has a particular level of "magic" involved. Is it likely it's case-by-case basis? I know 829 could be considered a "high priority" waitlist team seeing as it hasn't attended championships since 2010 and was a regional finalist two weeks ago.

Whatever the magic that was used, it has smiled kindly upon 422, and we have been accepted off the waitlist to attend championship! Everyone on the team is ecstatic. After losing to the eventual winners in the quarterfinals at both regionals we attended, (4v5 and 6v3), the team was still content to know that we had produced the highest quality robot in team history. This news is huge for team morale, and attending championship will hopefully push us over the edge into being an east coast powerhouse. See you all there!

- Harrison, 422 Build Lead and Drive Coach

[MARS_James]

Same for 1523 we just got confirmation that we are going.

[EricS-Team180]

Same for 1523 we just got confirmation that we are going.

<WooHoo!> ...high fives to the whole team!

Eric

[Clayton E]

Did you guys sign up the second the wait list opened up as well?

[PayneTrain]

Whatever the magic that was used, it has smiled kindly upon 422, and we have been accepted off the waitlist to attend championship! Everyone on the team is ecstatic. After losing to the eventual winners in the quarterfinals at both regionals we attended, (4v5 and 6v3), the team was still content to know that we had produced the highest quality robot in team history. This news is huge for team morale, and attending championship will hopefully push us over the edge into being an east coast powerhouse. See you all there!

- Harrison, 422 Build Lead and Drive Coach

Harrison, stop embarrassing yourself on Chief Delphi.

[Clayton E]

Have any other teams gotten in through the wait list after Monday?

[Akash Rastogi]

Have any other teams gotten in through the wait list after Monday?

Yup, 1923 from NJ got off the waitlist today.

[Carol A]

Rockford Robotics team 2039 got an invite late yesterday

[brrian27]

Yup Team 2383 got an invite yesterday afternoon and we're supr excied to rock St. Louis!!! :D

[Mark McLeod]

Reached the 400 team mark at Championship.

Is there any data you have that would suggest this is a high year for in-season team attrition? It feels high.

As a percentage of final teams it's about a third more than normal team attrition.
From the highest point of registration to the final tally by Championship:

2013: 40 teams dropped out (1.6%)
2012: 26 teams dropped out (1.1%)
2011: 20 teams dropped out (1.0%)

[Gregor]

How many teams attended 1, 2, 3, and (Texas Torque) regionals? Also how many teams attended 2 districts. How many attended 3? MSC, MAR and Champs are easy enough to find myself.

I'm looking to find out total registration cost across the board.

[Nemo]

How many teams attended 1, 2, 3, and (Texas Torque) regionals? Also how many teams attended 2 districts. How many attended 3? MSC, MAR and Champs are easy enough to find myself.

I'm looking to find out total registration cost across the board.

Using Ed Law's data, here are the numbers I get:

1 regional: 1544
2 regionals: 635
3 regionals: 38
4 regionals: 1

1 district: 7 (??)
2 districts: 270
3 districts: 35
4 districts: 0

[Gregor]

Using Ed Law's data, here are the numbers I get:

1 regional: 1544
2 regionals: 635
3 regionals: 38
4 regionals: 1

1 district: 7 (??)
2 districts: 270
3 districts: 35
4 districts: 0

How many of those one and two regional teams were teams coming from FiM and MAR?

Also does anyone have an archived version of this page? I want to confirm my cost numbers.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/frc-payment-terms

[Siri]

How many of those one and two regional teams were teams coming from FiM and MAR?

Also does anyone have an archived version of this page? I want to confirm my cost numbers.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/frc-payment-termsLink (http://web.archive.org/web/20130116030659/http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/frc-payment-terms)

[Nemo]

How many of those one and two regional teams were teams coming from FiM and MAR?


There were 17 district teams attending one regional plus 4 teams attending two regionals.

[PVCpirate]

Gregor, don't you also need a breakdown of MAR/FiM for the 3 district teams?

[Nemo]

As long as I have the numbers handy, here is the one that probably interests me the most:

Total events attended, including district, regional, regional championship, and world championship:


Events Teams %Teams
1 1421 56.6%
2 700 27.9%
3 298 11.9%
4 69 2.8%
5 21 0.8%


It would be cool to know the total number of events including state championships and off-season events. But that would be a little more difficult to compile, and one would have to wait until later in the year to know who's going to the various events.

[Gregor]

Gregor, don't you also need a breakdown of MAR/FiM for the 3 district teams?

Yes you're right. Dan, can I trouble you once more?

[Nemo]

Yes you're right. Dan, can I trouble you once more?

Here's a spreadsheet with Ed Law's data parsed into number of events and which type of event. I listed the number of teams attending 2 and 3 district events previously; did you want that broken down according to another criteria?

14843

[Basel A]

Not sure why you guys are assuming all teams have been to five events or fewer; there's one team that has been to six: 3314 (3 districts, 1 regional, MAR CMP, CMP CMP).

[Mark McLeod]

I pulled from the FIRST database at noon today and got slightly different numbers, probably because of late team dropouts. Doesn't matter in the magnitude of the $ expended though.

Of the 2524 teams registered:

Regional-only teams
4 Regionals: 1
3 Regionals: 38
2 Regionals: 632
1 Regional: 1541
Crossover teams (Districts playing at Regionals-these 21 teams are also included in the MAR/MI totals)

2 Regionals: 4
1 Regional: 17
MI teams

3 Districts: 32
2 Districts: 169
1 District: 2
MAR teams

3 Districts: 3
2 Districts: 103
1 District: 3
Additional events:

MAR-CMP: 49 (50 are listed but one was a no-show)
MI-CMP: 64
World Championship: 400-----------------------------------

Overall numbers worked out to be:

6 events: 1
5 events: 20
4 events: 69
3 events: 299
2 events: 702
1 event: 1433

[Racer26]

Wait what? Why are there teams that only attended 1 district?

[Wetzel]

Wait what? Why are there teams that only attended 1 district?
Some teams do not want to attend more than one event.

Wetzel

[bduddy]

Over 60% of teams in FRC only go to one event. More people here need to keep that in mind...

[dodar]

Who attended 6 events?

[Mark McLeod]

Answered earlier.
Team 3314 signed up for:

MAR-Bridgewater
MAR-Mt. Olive
MAR TCNJ
MAR CMP
NYC
World CMPWho attended 6 events?

Not sure why you guys are assuming all teams have been to five events or fewer; there's one team that has been to six: 3314 (3 districts, 1 regional, MAR CMP, CMP CMP).

[Gregor]

I pulled from the FIRST database at noon today and got slightly different numbers, probably because of late team dropouts. Doesn't matter in the magnitude of the $ expended though.

Of the 2524 teams registered:

Regional-only teams
4 Regionals: 1
3 Regionals: 38
2 Regionals: 632
1 Regionals: 1541
Crossover teams (Districts playing at Regionals-these 21 teams are also included in the MAR/MI totals)

2 Regionals: 4
1 Regional: 17
MI teams

3 Districts: 32
2 Districts: 169
1 District: 2
MAR teams

3 Districts: 3
2 Districts: 103
1 District: 3
Additional events:

MAR-CMP: 49 (50 are listed but one was a no-show)
MI-CMP: 64
World Championship: 400-----------------------------------

Overall numbers worked out to be:

6 events: 1
5 events: 20
4 events: 69
3 events: 299
2 events: 702
1 event: 1433

Can you split up the regional and district events into rookie/veteran, and the 3 district teams into FiM/MAR?

[Mark McLeod]

Can you split up the regional and district events into rookie/veteran, and the 3 district teams into FiM/MAR?
3 district teams are already split up between FiM and MAR on that breakout.

Regional-only

323 rookies
1889 veteransMI

28 rookies
175 veteransMAR

9 rookies
100 veteransI get $14,869,000 in FRC team registration fees.
That doesn't take into account any FIRST supplied grants or discounts for teams in need or some other form of cost sharing.

[Nemo]

Over 60% of teams in FRC only go to one event. More people here need to keep that in mind...

Actually, it's 57% this year. :p

Hopefully that number will keep going down.

[bduddy]

Actually, it's 57% this year. :p

Hopefully that number will keep going down.Oops, I scanned too quickly and didn't realize that "1 regional" could also include going to Championships... still illustrative when you compare it to some of the discussions here.

[Racer26]

Some teams do not want to attend more than one event.

Wetzel

If they're paying for it though, why not go? Seems wasteful.

[Gregor]

If they're paying for it though, why not go? Seems wasteful.

I'd like to know where those teams are from. Some teams in Michigan have over a 7 hour drive to get to their second event. Could still be a cost issue.

[Mark McLeod]

Distance doesn't seem to be an issue at play here for the single district teams.
They are all in or near major cities.

Detroit area:

Team 2676 Lincoln Park, MI
Team 3706 Ecorse, MIPhiladelphia area

Team 709 Bryn Mawt, PA
Team 4373 Jenkintown, PAand

Team 1617 Newark, NJ

[Mark McLeod]

Some random year-end charts:

http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/Returning-New-Lost_Teams_med.jpg (http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/Returning-New-Lost_Teams.jpg)

http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/VeteranSeasons_med.jpg (http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/VeteranSeasons.jpg)

http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/TeamNumberGroupings-1_med.jpg (http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/TeamNumberGroupings-1.jpg)

http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/TeamRetention_med.jpg (http://www.team358.org/files/frc_records/TeamRetention.jpg)