Re: California Rankings 2014
 

I also heard that its been tough to find small venues to house a district event. Very few california high schools have an building large enough to house pits. I think a lot of university venues are just too big.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

I personally love our university venue for the Sacramento Regional at UC Davis, it's the perfect size, however, we have to go outside and up a ramp two stories to get to the practice field. But that's a small price to pay for having the amount of space that the Pavilion has. When we traveled to SVR a while back, it was small in comparison to Davis, but understandably so because it's a state school and not a UC. The pits and practice field were perfectly fine, but we had difficulty with seating especially with so many large teams there. At CVR, the high school is more than capable of hosting the regional. Sure, the volunteers had to share their room for the practice field, but it worked. Not really many complaints there. A lot of newer high schools are capable of holding events, ours was opened in 2006 and we proved that we can do it. I think the main problem with high school venues is the conflict with school. At CVR, they were lucky enough to convince the school district to declare a holiday in honor of the regional. That won't fly with some other school districts. It's difficult to tell the whole school that there won't be access to either gyms for two days.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

Anyone familiar with this new non-"district" system? I'd be interested to hear how it works and what the plan looks like.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

No details yet, but from what I understand, the original idea a few years ago was to have district-sized events and more of them as opposed to a handful of large regionals. CVR was the first example of this. I don't know how much the idea has changed.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

It's just a branding thing... It'd be districts.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

This is what I understand too.

Any reason why the pits and the field have to be in the same building? We've really liked the setup at CalGames and MTTD in the past. IMO people really don't care about pushing their robot between buildings in sunny California. The hike up two stories at SAC is much worse. Most high schools have one large basketball court with bleachers plus a different smaller gym/dance room/cafeteria, so could host an event like this.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

So, same point model system? Similar venue selection process? Pricing? District Championship? All of that the same?...

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

Don't know the details, as I haven't talked to Jim Beck in a while, but the only difference that I know of as of yet is that it will be called the "Qualifier" system. I'd suspect many if not all of the other attributes are the same, albeit potentially with different names.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

Except when it rains, I.e., IE this year. I personally like the high school gym setting. Really focuses the energy

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

Despite the rumors of rain at IE, it never rains in California.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

I feel that having some areas doing regionals and others doing districts is unfair to teams. Teams from districts can compete in regionals and take World Championship slots from the regional event but regional teams can't return the favor :) It is also inherently more difficult to earn an invitation to the World Championships in a regional system; a team that consistently performs well and makes it to the semifinals in both of their district events is probably favored to earn a bid (assuming that they do similarly well in the District Championship event) but a team that does the same in two regionals is not going to St. Louis unless they win RCA, EI, or RAS (qualifying awards). I really hope that we all get into the same system soon and I really hope that system is the district system.

I think that our school could host a 30 team district event; we have had Battle at the Border here for the last 3 years, an off-season event with 30 teams. We haven't presented the idea of having another event here to the administration yet, but I am sure that they are fine with it :D

Well...I'm not sure at all, but we'd love to host an event here.

Anywho, I am mostly just curious about when/if and it seems like "not next year" is the answer for now.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

I've heard of some folks nosing around for potential offseason sites and coming up with a couple high schools that just might be able to make it work--and both have teams. And a couple other "smallish" venues.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

I heard that too, I forget the number of venues we need to find still. 3309 tried to see if any of our 3 high schools can host but none of our facilities are large enough. Servite will be building a new gym in a few years and robotics events are being considered in its design. So we will have to see how that turns out.

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

Basically two sites for each site we now have

Re: California Rankings 2014
 

This was the first year that I remember at Davis where it didn't rain...