The scheduling of events on Practice Day at regionals has always bothered me. Using the Finger Lakes Regional agenda as an example, Practice Day runs from 8:30 AM to 8:00 PM. Practice matches are scheduled from 10 AM to 4:30 PM with an hour break for lunch, allowing teams 5.5 hours to play these matches. Teams then have from 4:30 PM until 8 to do whatever they need.

I believe this current system has a lot of problems. First, the practice matches before noon are extremely under-utilized. Even for teams whom are finished with their robot, the process of setting up a pit, testing everything, and getting pre-inspected often takes a while. Expecting teams to make a match beginning just 90 minutes after they first have access to their robot is quite a high bar. As a result, the practice matches from 10-12 barely even happen, and when they do there are never more than two robots on the field.

After lunch, the situation is usually a little bit better. However, inspectors rightfully encourage teams to get fully inspected as soon as they can. This is something my team has done and we have missed practice matches to meet this goal before. Even with a complete or nearly complete robot, by getting inspected early we have trouble making more than a single scheduled practice match in a day.

Once matches are over, teams that are "done" and inspected can do essentially nothing. The practice field is usually already fully booked at this point, and since robot operation in the pits is quite limited, all of the extra time of practice day just goes to waste. The only teams who benefit from this time are teams who are not done finishing their robots, and these teams would miss their practice matches no matter when they were scheduled.

I believe if we changed the current system to have practice matches from 12:30 PM to 6 PM, with the possible addition of an inspection requirement, practice day would be better for everyone. Inspectors would be happy as teams no longer have an incentive to push inspections off. Teams with finished or mostly finished robots would have four hours to get their pits and robots in order before they have to practice. Teams without finished robots would actually have a chance of testing their robot if they work quickly enough. All teams would enjoy the benefits of a practice match with more partners and opponents to play with. Volunteers would be needed for the same amount of time as they would be with the old schedule (5.5 hours), so their commitment would not grow. Finally, there would be far less "wasted time" at the end of the day where teams are done but can't do anything since the practice field is closed. To me, it seems like a win-win situation for all parties involved.

I guess this is less of a question and more of a suggestion - my apologies for that. If there are other factors in play influencing the practice match schedule, or if there are good reasons why this idea isn't feasible, I'd love to hear about them. I know setting up something as complex and large scale as a FIRST competition is never easy, and perhaps there are factors in play not obvious to participants that make things work this way. All that said, I believe a change like this would greatly increase team competitiveness, improve the quality of matches, and help prevent the end-of-day "inspection rush".

Thank you for your time and consideration