[FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals

[iPenguin]

From Ken's Blog:

This season over 3,000 teams will compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. If you do the math, that’s over 30,000 students involved in FTC competitions.

This growth is exciting and presents a great opportunity.

An important part of FTC is merit based advancement. In short, teams who are judged and compete at the highest levels advance to the next competition. With 3,000 plus teams, earning your way from a state or regional Championship to the FTC World Championship is a narrow funnel – allowing only two teams per event. In order to make this more equitable and to give teams a chance at more events to continue their journey, FIRST is introducing a new level of competition called FTC Super-Regionals.

Beginning this season, teams in the U.S. will advance from state or regional-level Championships to one of four Super-Regionals, before advancing to the FTC World Championship.

This new tier in the advancement ladder creates a sustainable system for the program’s merit-based qualification system. The Super-Regionals are slated to take place in Northern California, Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania.


http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FTC/FTC_Images/SRMap.png (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FTC/FTC_Images/SRMap.png)

For more information on the Super-Regionals, please visit the Super-Regionals FAQ page (http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/super-regionals).

~Ken Johnson
Director, FIRST Tech Challenge


Ready or not, here they come FTC!

[ehochstein]

Here is the email sent out to FTC Team Leaders:

FTC Teams,

Thanks to the efforts of FIRST volunteers, FTC has seen strong program growth and a new level of competition is needed to give the growing number of teams more opportunities to participate. The introduction of a new advancement tier allows FTC to maintain a sustainable event structure, continue offering merit-based advancement and increase the level of competition.

Beginning in the 2013-2014 season, FTC teams in the United States will advance from state or regional-level Championship Tournaments to one of four Super-Regional Tournaments, before advancing to the FTC World Championship.

The four Super-Regional tournaments will be hosted in Northern California, Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania. These locations were selected based on timing, accessibility, safety, local support, and resources to execute a strong event.

Super-Regionals are FIRST-endorsed events and are expected to expand outside of the U.S. in the future. Please refer to the Super-Regionals FAQ page for more information.

~The FTC Staff


This is a very interesting change! I will run running two FTC teams this year and mentoring a third. Excited to see how this works out! I'll totally be attending the super regional in Iowa.

$500 registration (if qualified) will not help our checkbook though :(

[Liberty4All]

I am totally thrilled about this. As an Affiliate Partner for the Greater Los Angeles Region I've been getting a lot of feedback about increasing the competitive level of play and opportunities for teams.

Way to go FTC HQ - I really think you got it right.

And of course, now we get to have a fun, California-themed Super Regional. Nice... :D

[Madison]

This is going to force us to reevaluate our participation in FTC, as it's likely to interfere with FRC season and will significantly increase our costs.

[Boe]

I cant help but think this is a sort of trial run for frc and is similiar to what FIRST plans for frc's future setup especially considering there will be ~3000 frc teams next year...

[Joe G.]

Like it or not, this is the direction that things have to go in. Championships, for FTC and FRC, can't get much bigger. The simple truth is that championships is going to become harder and harder to get to, and this is a better solution than further cuts to the qualification criteria (If this means that all 3 members of winning regional alliances will quality for these events again, I will be THRILLED.) I would expect FRC to move in a similar direction soon as well.

I think it would be interesting if these "Super Regionals" became combined events much like the World Championship, with FLL, FTC, and FRC represented under the same roof. This would cut travel costs for teams that participate in both, and give these super regionals a championship event feeling.

[iPenguin]

I think it would be interesting if these "Super Regionals" became combined events much like the World Championship, with FLL, FTC, and FRC represented under the same roof. This would cut travel costs for teams that participate in both, and give these super regionals a championship event feeling.

The problem with all those combined regionals is staffing. There aren't enough volunteers to meet the needed capacity. Plus, some volunteers (like myself) like to volunteer at both FRC and FTC events, and some like to do all three.

The other problem with combined regionals is WiFi traffic. When you have several dozen FRC bots and several dozen FTC bots in the same area, they do not play nice with each other. I know specifically during this past year at the Alamo Regional, they also ran one of their Texas State FTC Tournaments, and there were numerous problems on the field due to a high volume of WiFi traffic.

[maths222]

To throw some numbers at everyone:

At nationals, there are 128 teams, 64 per division. I figure a super-regional will have up to 64 teams, no more. 20-25 teams advancing per super-regional (according to an official blog comment) = 80-100 from super-regionals combined. This year 26 teams were international; I figure the number will only go up for next year.

[pyroslev]

So in Virginia, does this mean teams from West Virginia and North Carolina that hop over the border to our events can't anymore? I know some states have closed borders cause they have enough teams in state already. Wonder how this will affect all that.

[orangemoore]

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

[Joe G.]

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

It becomes harder to make the world championships every year, on the basis of more teams entering FTC and teams getting better. This will give more teams the opportunity to play elite-level events, and do a better job at selecting those to advance further to the world championship.

[JohnFogarty]

Let me explain some of the reasons for this change that I know of because I've been talking with some staff at FIRST about creating a system like this for well over a year.

1. The Ability for deserving teams to compete more at a higher level.
We all know there are FTC teams that travel out of state and beyond their own state championship to gain experience and to try for last chance tickets at the world championship. However, it has been the experience of the teams within those states that out of state teams usually that have competed 2-3 times before come in and "clean the floor" with the in state teams, leaving them with no ability to compete at a higher level. Thus the super regional is brought into the picture. This allows/closes states in order to helm them advance their own teams to the regional event and finally allows events to advance whole alliances instead of just alliance captains. Then the super-regional is an event that will have a similar level of competition to World.

2. World Championship will consist of the best teams from around the world.

I know that Global Force is excited about this change since out of our 4 State Championship titles we only we able to attend world twice.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Via FTC Facebook page today
(https://www.facebook.com/FTCTeams?ref=ts&fref=ts)
Event details for two Super-Regional Championship Tournaments are now available!
South: San Antonio, TX; Feb. 26-28, 2014
North: Iowa City, IA; April 3-5, 2014
Learn more at http://ow.ly/mLLH2

[jcarr]

There are some advantages to this approach, since all members of the winning alliance advance to the World Championship, but this adds tremendous costs to the program. Now we have to travel to the super-regional, probably stay over night, and then we will have only 3 weeks to make plane and hotel reservations for Worlds, if we get in. We will be very unlikely to get enough rooms in one hotel that is close, we will have to pay outrageous last minute airfare, and the $500 entrance fee is clearly inflated, since we throw most of the competitions for free. When you talk about the difference between $250/person advance air fare and $1200/person last minute air fare, on top of the problem of scattering the team among multiple hotels, this has very serious implications for low budget teams.

I suspect that many teams who qualify will not have enough time to raise the funds to travel to Worlds and those that do make it will find their required budet inflated significantly. Some teams have always had to pay those types of fares if their state competition wasn't held until March, but you had the option of competing in earlier state tournaments to lower your travel costs, and even March qualifiers had a full month and a half to arrange travel.

I think that FIRST is missing the point of FTC in that it is a LOW COST robotics program. FTC Teams don't have a lot of resources or need them, unlike the very expensive FRC program. That is largely the secret of its success. FLL is even cheaper and is much more successful. FIRST took a poll about the idea of a super-regional in FTC two years ago and every coach I talked to said they thought it was a horrible idea and said they answered negatively on the poll. I don't know the official results of that poll, but my sample of coaches seemed to be universally opposed - mostly because of price and uncertainty. We will adapt to this change as well as the other expensive changes that FIRST has introduced, but we think the change should be reconsidered.

[Andrew Schuetze]

I don't want to start a debate and I don't have access to coaching poll data. I run an FLL championship and this year we could not send a single winning team to world festival because we were out of the rotation. FLL is so huge championships are only guaranteed to send ONE winning team to World Festival about every two or three years.

I don't think we can compare FLL structures to FTC as nobody would be happy with FTC championships sending only ONE team to World Championship every two or three years..

[Scott_4140]

Basically this comes down to planning. If you believe your team has a reasonable chance of qualifying for your Super-Regional, you should be fundraising for that throughout the season. The same thing applies for the World Championships.

There will be teams that are totally surprised that they qualify. Rookie teams don't know what level of competition to expect. They may end up in the winning alliance and earn a slot at their Super-Regional. They're probably not going to advance to the World Championships. I don't believe there will be very many teams that get surprised twice.

Transportation and lodging at the super regionals shouldn't be killers for teams. Most teams live within driving distance. The ones that are farther out will have the hardest time.

Work with your Affiliate Partners now to find ways to minimize this impact. Maybe help them recruit a new sponsor to help fund teams to the next level. Or focus on the hardship cases. Or set up a surcharge at your state level to help pay down some of these costs. Get involved. Don't wait for someone else to solve the problem.

For Champs, you may need to plan ahead and reserve rooms and flights early. Cancel if you don't make the cut. It's a much smaller hit than paying the last minute prices. None of these problems are insurmountable.

World Championships are not going to get much larger for FTC. They may never get larger. We absolutely don't want to get into the situation that FLL is in. Super-Regionals are the most practical solution they could come up with. Maybe as the program continues to grow, the number of Super-Regionals may increase. This would further reduce advancing teams costs as everything gets closer.

We're victims of our own success.

[jweiland1]

I believe that the Superregionals will have 72 teams each-so many more teams(288 vs 120) will get a chance to attend a "big tournament". Approximately 2-5 teams will advance from each state championship and something like 20 teams advance from the super regionals to Worlds.

[Scott_4140]

Yes, each Super Regional will have 72 teams. 20-25 will advance from each Super Regional to the World Championships. I don't know if the same number will advance from each of the four Super Regionals or if it will be apportioned based on the number of teams in each Super Region.

International Affiliate Partner Championship tournaments will make up the remainder of the 128 teams at the World Championships. I'd guess they'll account for about 40 slots this year, given past international growth.

The number of teams advancing from each Affiliate Partner to the Super Regional will be determined by each Super Regional planning committee. Each Affiliate Partner Championship tournament is guaranteed to send at least 2 teams. The balance will be apportioned by the committee.

The North Regional will apportion the balance based on number of teams in each state. So a state like Iowa could send 15 team. A state like West Virginia could only send 3 or 4. Average will be 6 to 8 teams depending how many active Affiliate Partners there are in your Super Region.

Still lots of details to work out.

[Mr. 1033]

I'm both excited and not thrilled about this.

It's great in the sense that teams get "more plays". Hearing numbers like 10-13 from States move on to the Super Regional instead of 2 is music to my ears and hopefully increases the competitiveness of Worlds etc as well.

From a coaching stand point.... it's another weekend from FRC that will be used for the super regional and we now have travel expenses and another registration.

There's an opportunity cost but all in all....at this point I'm ready for it.

[Nemo]

I think Iowa benefits more than anybody. This year we got two spots to Worlds out of 130+ teams, which made us the most underrepresented area anywhere. Having the Super Regional in our state will be fantastic.

I think it will be much easier to advance to Worlds now, because something like 1/4 of the teams from state will advance, then something like 1/4 of the teams from Super Regionals will go to Worlds. That's way less random than 2 out of 48, so anybody who brings a really solid team and robot is going to have a great chance of advancing. The way it has been in Iowa the past few years, any given team, no matter how good, only ever had a random chance of winning as the captain of the first alliance with only 5-6 qualifier matches. The Inspire Award isn't random, but that has gone to FTC 3550 (Beta) every year I've been involved (won at Worlds this year).

Qualifying the entire winning alliance is such a huge improvement. I'm very glad to see that. Travel expenses and time are the drawbacks, but I think the super regional system comes out ahead on balance.

[CENTURION]

1. The Ability for deserving teams to compete more at a higher level.
We all know there are FTC teams that travel out of state and beyond their own state championship to gain experience and to try for last chance tickets at the world championship. However, it has been the experience of the teams within those states that out of state teams usually that have competed 2-3 times before come in and "clean the floor" with the in state teams, leaving them with no ability to compete at a higher level. Thus the super regional is brought into the picture. This allows/closes states in order to helm them advance their own teams to the regional event and finally allows events to advance whole alliances instead of just alliance captains. Then the super-regional is an event that will have a similar level of competition to World.

(emphasis mine)

So this system will lock in states so out-of-state teams can't compete at other state's regionals? I would love that. Currently, Wisconsin doesn't have enough teams to require qualifying events, so out-of-state teams see the WI regional as an easy target, because they don't have to qualify for it. And as a result, Wisconsin teams didn't get to advance.

[JohnFogarty]

You are correct.

[Andrew Schuetze]

I don't think the implementation of Super-Regional Championship tournaments does anything to lock in States. Please check the FAQ (http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/super-regionals) on the FIRST website.
Can I pick which Super-Regional I want to attend once I qualify?

No. Each Championship will advance teams to a specified Super-Regional. It does not matter where your team is located; you will advance to the Super-Regional designated for the Championship where you qualify.

My reading of this policy is that a team from state X could compete in the Championship system of state Y if they have been and will continue to allow teams from out of state to still compete at their event(s).

[JohnFogarty]

I suppose that statement would make it so you could compete within your region... but this system is designed to discourage teams from competing at events far beyond their region in a last hope to make a seat a world/region championships.

South Carolina in particular had a large problem with that this past season. Not to say we didn't enjoy the competition from out of state..but when only one or two in-state teams are placing in any given award category it gets a bit discouraging to the teams that you would like to see returning to the FTC program...and not getting dragged away by the new allure that VEX seems to be pushing in our state.

[gotrobot?]

We are one of those teams that travels to other states to compete. Up until now, Illinois has held their qualifiers in November and a championship in December. Competing in other states lengthened our season and experience. It also provided us the opportunity to meet a lot of great teams--some of whom we still keep in contact.

Not all the out of state tournaments were championships, some were regional qualifiers too, but admittedly the chance of getting to Worlds from an out of state championship did have its attraction.

This year IL is running 6 qualifiers over a couple months and the state championship in February. I'm pretty sure this will impact our out of state ventures but with a little luck we might be able to participate in at least one.

[Carol A]

Why did they put the North Super-Regional the same weekend as Midwest FRC regional? We are a community based FRC team but are starting 3 FTC teams in 3 high schools this year. If one of the FTC teams goes to Super-Regional our Mentors, Students, & Volunteers would be split. I guess we will have to go to Central IL (if it is not Week 6) & Wisc. Regionals.

[Nemo]

Why did they put the North Super-Regional the same weekend as Midwest FRC regional? We are a community based FRC team but are starting 3 FTC teams in 3 high schools this year. If one of the FTC teams goes to Super-Regional our Mentors, Students, & Volunteers would be split. I guess we will have to go to Central IL (if it is not Week 6) & Wisc. Regionals.

I actually think they chose the date wisely. There are only five possible weekends to hold the super regional, bracketed by Indiana State FTC championship (the last state champs, I believe), and Worlds. You can't have the super regional before all of the state championship events, and you really don't want to have the super regional the week right after that since that would only be a five day gap between competitions. So really, you're looking at FRC week 4, 5, 6, 7, or the week before Champs. Week before champs is bad since that would be only a 3 day gap between trips.

So that leaves week 5, 6, and 7. Week 5 has at least three FRC regionals, so that's the worst option if you only care about FRC vs FTC conflicts. Between week 6 and 7 with one event each in the Midwest, I could go either way. Conflicting with MSC and being one week later isn't a great option, in my opinion.

March 15: FRC Week 3, plus Indiana State FTC Champs
March 22: 5 days after Indiana FTC, plus FRC Week 4, Wisconsin + Kansas City + Boilermaker + Buckeye
March 29: FRC Week 5, Minneapolis 10K/North Star + Queen City
April 5: Week 6, Midwest
April 12: Week 7, Michigan State Champs
April 19: 4 days until World Championship

The April 5th weekend gives teams two full weeks between super regional and Worlds, which sounds about right.

I do empathize with your teams, though. We also have FTC + FRC, and it creates some tricky calendar choices.

[Just_In_Time]

Does anyone know around how many teams will be advancing from the State Championships to the Super Regionals? Will it vary by the number of FTC teams in the state, number of states in the region, or will it be the same number across the board for every State Championship? I read on the Oregon FTC website that they will be advancing 11 teams to Super Regionals. If anyone knows anything about the East Region (specifically New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delware, and Maryland) it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

JIT

[Sasha]

Does anyone know around how many teams will be advancing from the State Championships to the Super Regionals?...
If anyone knows anything about the East Region (specifically New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delware, and Maryland) it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

JIT

According to the info given at lower Hudson qualifier (http://csis.pace.edu/~firsttech/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/FTC-program-lower-hudson-2014-FINAL.pdf), the East Region super-regional will have 72 teams coming from 12 championships. Assuming the same number of teams from each championship, it means that six teams advance from each one.

[Nemo]

According to the info given at lower Hudson qualifier (http://csis.pace.edu/~firsttech/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/FTC-program-lower-hudson-2014-FINAL.pdf), the East Region super-regional will have 72 teams coming from 12 championships. Assuming the same number of teams from each championship, it means that six teams advance from each one.

It is not safe to assume that the same number of teams will advance from each Championship tournament.

[JohnFogarty]

I as a state affiliate partner have access to the information on how many teams from each state qualify I just am not sure if I'm allowed to post the list here.

I can say this, it is a scaled number of teams per state based on the number of teams in the state.

I also mispoke earlier and some teams might already know this. The allowing of out of state teams into a state championship is left to the disgression of the Affiliate Partner, not FIRST in reality. I closed the South Carolina Championship off to out of state teams for the immidiate future because of the recent short comings of the FTC program within the state.

3 Qualified teams from SC are:
Team 3864 Global Force - Inspire & (1st Seed & Finalist Alliance Captain)
Team 327 Gamma Factor - Winning Alliance Captain & 2nd Place Inspire
Team 208 KC Robotics - Winning Alliance 2nd Pick

[jentang]

Hello, I was wondering if it is at all possible to compete at the Super-Regional without qualifying? Say a team did very well at their state competition and was extremely close to qualifying but was not able to due to the number of spots given for Super Regional...could there be a slight possibility for other teams that did not qualify at their competition to attend and compete?

[MattRain]

I dont think so.. Each state has the main people that qualified, and then the alternatives. If a main cant go, the alternatives are then called up. Most of the time, it stays with the main people, rarely does a main drop out.

[Wingus&Dingus]

You'll find the team invitation list here http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/super-regionals

"How can I sign up for a Super-Regional?

Teams must qualify to attend Super-Regional events through their performance at a regional Championship event. Eligible teams will receive an invitation with registration instructions after their state or regional Championship. See below for details on the advancement criteria."

I guess if you didn't receive an invitation then you can't compete at a Super-Regional.

[PhilBot]

We are one of those teams that travels to other states to compete. Competing in other states lengthened our season and experience. It also provided us the opportunity to meet a lot of great teams--some of whom we still keep in contact.

I agree with your sentiments. As a MD team, we've played in MD, WV, DE and OH. We like the diversity.

We don't do it because we see an "easy target" in another state. Quite the contrary, we like the stiff competition. This year we competed in Ohio so we could attempt to progress to the IOWA Super Regional. We have a tour of the John Deer factory planned. It will be a great experience for our Rural team.

See you there!!!

Phil.

[Andrew Schuetze]

The problem with all those combined regionals is staffing. There aren't enough volunteers to meet the needed capacity. Plus, some volunteers (like myself) like to volunteer at both FRC and FTC events, and some like to do all three.

The other problem with combined regionals is WiFi traffic. When you have several dozen FRC bots and several dozen FTC bots in the same area, they do not play nice with each other. I know specifically during this past year at the Alamo Regional, they also ran one of their Texas State FTC Tournaments, and there were numerous problems on the field due to a high volume of WiFi traffic.

Just wanted to follow up on this post from the early discussion in this thread. Staffing was and is always an issue. We were fortunate at the South Super-Regional to have many FTC heavy hitters from all across the South as well as strong support from the Texas and Oklahoma FTC partners. If you have the time and ability, I urge the FTC community to volunteer at the North, East, and/or West Super-Regional this year as FTC needs your support. Log into VIMS and sign up. I think a link was sent out recently. If I find it, I'll add a new post with just the links. Others who may have the links are welcome to post it before me if able.

In regards to wifi, we learned a lot from the previous three years of running the combined events here in San Antonio. This year was our best year in that regard. We were able to increase the number and types of technology we used to monitor, detect and decrease the amount of wifi traffic in the competition space. Three big efforts included: the use of Fluke meters with directional functionality to quickly locate hotspots, placing FTC fields in a ballroom with a physical wall separating the competition fields from all the FRC and FTC pits as well as the FRC fields, and more FTAs and a one man wifi sniffer supported by web-based monitoring equipment at HQ. The grand total of hotspots detected and shut down during 2 full days of competition was 50! One from a FRC coach in the stands of the FRC field who didn't understand why it was an issue. We also sent out a crack crew of veteran FRC teams to all of the FRC rookies on Thursday, FRC inspection day, to help the rookies understand what "bridge mode" is and how to set up their robot for competition. This would have been caught during FRC robot inspections, but rookies tend to be the last in that line so we wanted to catch that issue sooner rather than later.

End result, this year with more FTC teams and the same number of 64 FRC teams in the space, we ran our two division event without many replays due to technology. We consistently ran 12 matches per hour which averages to 5 minute turns. Not checking FTA post action reports and going from memory, I think our first technology related replay came during the elimination rounds and was due to a faulty joystick.

FRC and FTC can coexist but it takes more volunteers and more technology as well as some prudent logistics to make it work as well as we were able to this season at the Alamo FRC regional / FTC South Super-Regional Championship.