Off-season popularity... Could this be a new trend for FIRST?
 

Everywhere I look there is new interest to start an off-season competition. I have yet to find a count on how many offseason competitions occur every year, but I know that number is continuously increasing.

According to Dean, FIRST wants to become a houshold name, an American pastime, an activity as familiar to students as Basketball or Concert Band.

But here's the difference... basketball teams do not travel 200 miles to compete, they do it in a local town gym. Marching bands may enter small competitions at another area high school. Football teams get their local town and school communities excited by participating in Friday night rivalries.

FIRST is different... we commute, journey, and make pilgramage to attend our events. Something that is expensive and exclusive.

How do we then make FIRST a household name??

I think that someday, perhaps not in the near future but something that is inevitable... is to rid ourselves of huge regional competitions and hold events similar to the off-season competitions that are gaining so much popularity.

FIRST would have a list of requirements to meet and perhaps send a representative to the competition to make sure things are consistant, but overall... it would be a lot cheaper for teams when it comes to registration fees and travel expenses. And it can be just as much fun!

As with anything FIRST does, there would be numerous logistical problems to figure out... but what do you think? How could it work, what would be done, and how long before this becomes a necessity without changing the inital goals of FIRST?

There are a lot more high school sports teams in each individual area than FIRST robotics teams. I can imagine that happening if, say, every other high school had a FIRST team. This would allow you to not travel more than 40 miles or so to get to 3 regionals. FIRST is relatively new and will take much time to expand to the extremity of sports teams.

Maybe what FIRST could do is have each team attend 3 regionals in their area, then the winners (teams winning awards included) go on to a bigger competition (about the same time as nationals), then the winners go to another one, and somewhere along the line there will be nationals, perhaps in the summertime. This would allow more teams to participate in general and have more competitions, but keep the numbers at nationals the same.

I can definately see what your saying and i could see maybe 10 years or more down the road where lots of high schools have teams and regionals will be state regionals and then those will then transfer over to state competitions and then nationals. Unfortunately however this will limit how many teams can goto nationals and such and you wouldn't have a chance to compete with teams all across the country like we do now at regionals.

The other problem i could forsee is funding. Basketball teams dont have NEARLY the budget requirments of a FIRST team, and many teams have trouble finding funding in their town for one team let alone one for each high school in town.

There will always be a place for invitationals and off season competitions. Even in things like basketball and baseball there are still offseason competitions and tournaments where teams travel around the country and play other teams.

I think that one of the best aspects of having such large competitions is the fact that they do bring teams from all over. It is always amazing to hear how far teams have travelled just to compete in a FIRST event, and to narrow the spectrum of teams present at a competition would really make the competitions less exciting.

I don't think that this would be a great idea. Half the fun of the regionals is meeting people from- everywhere. If regionals were closer to where you were, and smaller, yea the competition would still be there but the chance to meet new people from other areas would start to dissapear. Yes, FIRST can be costly but that is also what fundraising is for. Maybe someday, if everyother school has a FIRST team this could be possible, but for how things are right now I think that it just wouldn't be logical.
Off season competitions provide the smaller, lower budget options to teams, and can be just as competitive. (though not official- but does it really MATTER if they are an offical regional or not?)

However, for example.. my team.. if we were to split into schools... that would be the atheletic 'region' or the NTL. I think it is wonderful that there are more and more emerging off-season competitions. It gives teams opportunities to compete more than twice. With this addition... I don't see anytime in the near future, the possibility of teams not experiencing Regionals. Hopefully, when our kids... and our grandkids enter FIRST, they will experience it with the community pride that football teams of small towns do today.

Well, to be a baller all you need is a Hoop ,a ball and a pair of sneakers

to play football all you need is grass and a ball

But for First You need a Good 8k in parts and another 5k for a basic field and another 10k for an organized game

Until those numbers get lower things will stay the way they are

here's my idea:

what we might do is group 4-7 teams that are close to each other into districts. once a week 4 of the teams would attend a meet wher they would participate in 3 matches. these meets would take place until all the teams had been through all possible alliance- and competitor- match-ups.

as i would never want to give up the large regionals (for the same reasons that kristen stated) and my idea would be insanely expensive for first to do on a nationwide basis, i think that the 'districts' should host thes local meets during the off-season.

Fortunatly, you have companies that will "donate" their services. For example, IRI had a company (I can't remember which off the top of my head) ship the field for free.... so the field wasn't much trouble. The $300 admission fee I'm sure helped pay for lots of the other necessities. On top of the admission fee, the snack bar was always filled with people coming to eat. I don't know how much that made, but I'm sure that helped cover it. Once you have the teams and robots built, the offseason competitions don't seem like they would cost too much to anybody, IF you have companies help out, and maybe even split the work between multiple teams to host the competition. For smaller competitions it might be harder, since once you have the field and the equipment to run the competition, it doesn't cost much to add more teams... its's just an issue of space and time to setup and cleanup. I think that offseason competitions could easily become very popular all over and if setup properly won't cost much to teams, so teams can attend multiple offseason events. That's just my 2 cents, please correct me if I'm wrong.

A friend and I were talking today about the future of FIRST, and we think that eventually, FIRST will have regionals, then those winners move on to a more broad regional, such as east/west us, and different countries, then those winners finally move on to a huge, televised "final nationals", so to speak.

So, you mean more like a tourney? That'd be decent, but what if you're bot was having a bad time during one of the "regionals"?

I also agree w/ kristen....
I've seen almost all the people I've talked to from CD (board and members) and regionals not from here...and meeting and socializing is a big part of FIRST (not to mention others). FIRST isn't all about building, it's also about mengaling (sp?).
[My theory on that maybe off, but hey...]

I'll still go to regionals and such if this happened, but it would ruin most of the fun...the other is indestructable knowing you helped build something that somehow might just help the future in some way.

don't worry elyse. by the time that would actually happen, you'll be married to jim with little robotics kidlets.;)

I don't see why off-seasons comps have to be the only thing happening. In my FBLA chapter, we have workshops, where people get together and learn new things. Why not do the same for FIRST? Honestly, a FIRST workshop where teams meet at a machine shop, or just a school, and swap knowledge and/or memories. There doesn't always have to be a competition for people to meet. Sure, you could have a comp and do the same things, but this is just an option!

Andrew W.K.

Very True. If I remember correctly team 45 hosts an off season workshop every year which covers practically all aspects of FIRST including the robot, 3-d design, animation, and traveling.

U know, i think we are on to something here. There are lots of rookie teams popping up, and a workshop would be absolutely vital. This should be something that is organized, because face it, its a lot easier to learn when u have time and no pressure. This should be something that FIRST should endorse.

Andrew W.K.

off season events
 

Let me tell you about off season events...from the perspective of someone that just finished putting one on. IT IS SOOOOO MUCH WORK! And though we had BAX Global ship everything for free for us, we are still hoping to just break even! We had 48 teams, only one field, a chairman's, animation competition. You don't realize how much money it takes to put this on. The little things add up and before you know it, it's all spent! (We also fed almost 1000 people as well.)

You would have to have someone that doesn't have a team put on these competitions because there is so much to do to organize an event. It would be so hard to both run a team and host an event at the same time. Though we all had a great time making the IRI happen, it's been a week and I'm still tired!

If FIRST is going to run these events, entry fees would still be high, if not higher, to cover salaries as well. It would be a great financial responsibility for a company to pick up. I would personally be scared that instead of a company sponsoring my team, they would want to pick up the event for the bigger publicity. (And my team stuggles for every little penny we get.)

Just a few thoughts while it's still fresh in my head and my eyelids are drooping! :)

Re: Off-season popularity... Could this be a new trend for FIRST?
 

This is exactly what many teams in Michigan, specifically Oakland county are doing.

Each fall there is a competition called OCCRA -Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association. There are 20 plus high school competing in local gyms on nights of the week as would your basketball team.

Each team has a kit of parts building a robot about the size of FIRST robots using the same controls. One major difference is that the robots are 100% student designed and built.

We are starting our 4th successful year.

Cost $ w/entry fee less than $800.00 per team including the robot build.

One of the goals is ti make robotics a school sport, played in the fall like a fall sport. We keep our robots all season and re-use the parts for the next season.

Leaders for this competition are teams #1, #33, #47, #65, #201. There are many other FIRST teams participating and doing the background work. All teams must take an active role in the organization, planning, running the events and so forth.

Several other areas of the country are looking at our format and are working on their own off-season - season of robotics.

yaaaay robotics kidlets

I've been neglecting CD, so now Im going back and reading elyse's posts, heh

thanks for working all that logic out for me babe ;) saves me some thinking time later for other things.

And yes we will be

until there are more off season events (a texas one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
i dont care.... and frankly its the same for many other teams because us southerners dont have much of a choice........