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[FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
From Ken's Blog:
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
Here is the email sent out to FTC Team Leaders:
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$500 registration (if qualified) will not help our checkbook though :( |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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 |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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.
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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...
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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. |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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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. |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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. |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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.
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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.
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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. |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
Via FTC Facebook page today
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Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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. |
Re: [FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals
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.. |
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