Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Par for the course; it all checks out.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

This was how it worked in New England too... until districts came. Even then it takes a season or so for people to really get it.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

I'll go look at the numbers, but I would hazard a guess that there is a higher % of teams in NE who went to two events pre-district system than there is in the DMV area.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

I'm making an assumption that the people planning this have met with the NE, MI and MAR leadership to get lots of pointers on this process. I can't imagine there is lots of "reinvent the wheel" going on.

Bummed that there are not any "Eastern Shore" events, but I can see with the size of the district on why.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

There are only five teams in the eastern shore (2 VA, 3MD). Hard to justify an event there currently. Fortunately, it's not as isolated as the Upper Peninsula was when Michigan went to districts.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Based on Ocean City, MD, (which seems most remote), it's only about 5 hours either way to get to the opposite side of the Chesapeake (with DC and several events within that trip). If you're trying to get to the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, it's over 5 hours just to get to the Mackinac Bridge from the far west end.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

The sad thing for us down in Southside VA ( The map created shows only one team, but there are are 6 within a ~50 mile radius ) is that we could travel to all events in NC easier than we can get to ANY event in our own district. I have expressed my concern with FIRST. NC wants us also -- just sayin

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Would have been swell to bring NC teams into the fold with teams in the DMV area. Why that didn't happen is above my clearance.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Not sure if NC wanted to. I think they wanted to go with SC. We should have been carved out to go with NC as has been done other places. Would REALLY miss the GREAT VA Teams though. Just looking from it as a $$$ thing.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

That really sucks. Raleigh is especially close to you guys too. Inter-district play will hopefully be more relevant down the line.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

I'm looking forward to the Inter-district play along with an 8th district event being added to FCPK. Having a home event on week 3 sucks right now, your choices are to compete back to back or fight for the limited spots at the week 1 event. I wish they had scheduled the single event week to be either week 2 or week 3 to alleviate some of these scheduling issues. I also wish I had seen this problem earlier so I could have brought it up in an early meeting. Who knows, maybe next year they will adjust the schedule to make up for this.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

I sorta see the approach of having 1 week 1 event as trying to put out any fires that show up inherently with a week one event, but I'm someone who has learned to love the bomb. I'd appreciate 1 week 2 or 3 event, but that's above my clearance.

With the current competition season of 6-7 weeks, there are pros and cons to any of the schedule setups. Run the districts without a week gap before champs and you can put late qualifiers in a real bind. Run the whole system through week 7 and you put late qualifiers to the world champs in a bind. Compact the district schedule to finish the district season in 6 weeks AND give teams a week break between the districts and their championship, and you choke out flexibility for teams.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

I agree with both statements. I can understand why they did it the way they did it, but I do hope it is something that is thought about in future years. When an 8th event is eventually added we won't have the issue anymore and the same is true when inter-district play is introduced.

I appreciate that they are trying to cram the events in the first 4 weeks to provide some time between the District Championship and the World Championship. There are pros and cons of each way of doing it.

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Greensboro is closer -- just 45 miles

Re: FIRST Chesapeake Districts
 

Yeah, I feel for all the eastern VA teams. It's not a great draw. However, most of the teams competing for that week 1 event will be the teams that attend the week 3 events. So at pure randomness each team has ~35-40% chance of getting that event (because there are some teams that are local to Haymarket and will choose this one during 1st event registration), and it's higher if you're on the ball.

I imagine most teams that want a week 1/3 event list and don't dawdle with registration will be able to get what they want.