DUDE!! JORDAN!!! You got to go to the nationals!!! I know you did!! We won the canadian regional with you guys!!! I was in the pit, i should know!! Remember the Cinderella Alliance? We kicked some serious arse and earned your way to Florida!!! And you get to go next year too!!! WTF is the problem?!?

You got to go anyways!

Ok. posting again. A little calmer now. i just noticed the date on the first message. Before the Canadian Regional eh? That sort of explains it. It looked there for a second like you were complaining you had the earn your way to the regional. I was ready to drive all the way up to Kincardine and give you a wedgie.

So it all turned out eh? That's really someting I'll never forget, taking that regional. First Candaian team to ever win.. ANYTHING. And only one year experience between the 3 of us. Maybee that's a record too. Does anyone know if an all rookie team has ever won a regioanl? If the answere is no, we at least tied the record.

The only problem about letting the top 8 finishers to go to Nationals is that you will not know you qualify until about a month before Nationals. This would make arranging travel plans rather difficult, and exepensive. Also some teams go to more than one regional, what happens if they finish in the top 8 twice. If you let the number 9 team go in one of those spots, from which regional would that team come from?

I agree that in the future a better system has to be developed, but it has to give the team enough notice to make their arrangments.

Look at the good side, next year when you go, you can ride that cool new Epcot ride, Mission: Space.

I don't know about a Regional but the first two years of FIRST the Championship was won by rookie teams. Of course in the first year that is all there was. :)

Mission: Space won't open any earlier than May of next year, so you will miss it when you go to the Nationals. So you will have to either go back to EPCOT later in the year, or wait until the 2004 Nationals.

On the other hand, I can tell you it will be worth the wait!

-dave

initially i was upset about the decision that only even teams could go since im on an odd team and this is my senior year

i think the main reason a lot of us feel that way it that we were getting to the point where nationals was taken for granted...... a big part of the fun is that there are hundreds of teams... but anyone else out there whos been doing this for a while knows that the first years of the nationals there werent even as many teams there as at some of the regionals from recent years.... also how many other programs allow everyone who participates to go to the championship? we are pretty lucky that first has made it so that even new teams can hang on to the inspiration by being invited automatically every other year.......and also we could always split it up into two semi championships, or something like that....... but it would only be a temporary solution because first is growing at such a high rate that in a few years even a double championship wouldnt be enough.... and then what do you do? make a quadruple championship? wouldnt that be a really big regional?
i guess im just saying, we feel bitter because we are used to being able to go.... but first had to do what they did, and we really should be excited about the growth and the fact that theres so many more opportunities to play other teams because of the growth (more regionals, summer competitions etc)

lucklily my team invited itself twice and we made it down there even with financial problems