| Alex2614 |
22-01-2015 00:26 |
Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
Quote:
Originally Posted by tStano
(Post 1431962)
To me (a student on a regional team from Wisconsin), one of the huge advantages I saw to districts was that it was unbelievably fair.
For the registration fee of 1 regional, you got all the qualification possibilities of someone who went to 3 districts. The unbag time was the same, etc, etc. This is untrue in regionals. You can attend as many as you can sign up for, and you get a shot at each one. You can buy robot work time and chances at championships, (i suppose with waitlist, you can buy trips to championships too, so this argument is weak...). Now, with this new thing, you can go to a week 1 or 2 district somewhere else and get your robot tuned up before you compete for real. You've bought robot work time; an advantage over teams with less money. This isn't a huge disadvantage to the system, and its probably worth it, and my opinion means nothing, but its the first thing I thought when I read this thread.
Another thing. Switching to the district model, having everyone in it, and having all district interdistrict play count would essentially end up with what we have now, with one more tier of competition, except the districts are held mostly in gyms, and we lose much of the spectator aspect we've been working so hard to build.
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Except for the cost effectiveness and the greater number of events, which increases awareness significantly. More cities and towns have the opportunity to hold events that they didn't before. We would never be able to hold a regional here in Morgantown, but holding a district event is dry feasible (we held an off-season last summer). Lower cost with easily 3x the number of events. I don see how that decreases spectator visibility in any way. People in these towns are less likely to travel an hour or more away to an event but if it was in their hometown they would. We could never get our school board or sponsors to travel to Pittsburgh with us. But with a district locally we could.
Eventually everyone will be all districts and I'll tell you why by using West Virginia as an example. What happens to us when PA, OH, National Capital Area, NC, and SC, and TN go to districts and we are not included? That puts our CLOSEST regional 10-15 hours away. With "pockets" of regional teams who have to pay 5 times as much to travel 5 times as far only to get much less playing time, these teams will either join a district or leave FIRST. We're already starting to see team's regional options diminish, as someone pointed out above in MN.
You essentially stifle growth by marginalizing teams from areas with lower "density" of teams. It puts WV at an even greater disadvantage than it already is. It is essentially punishing us for not having enough teams, but makes it more difficult for teams to start.
However, if we were lumped into a nearby district region, say PA or OH (or both) we would be better off. All districts in the US will eventually happen out of necessity as FRC continues to grow. |
