Chairmans at nationals
 

I Was curious. When you win nattionals, do you get to come back to nationals each year for no cost?

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

No you have to pay.
You just automatically qualify for life.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

I thought it was just qualify for next season. Qualifying for life must be nice. Then all your future rookie members would get to enjoy Nats then.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

Yes.
Actually our team qualfies for the championship twice because we are also an original FIRST team (there are only 6 remaining).

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

Since you're qualified twice, but can only physically go once, does that mean you get twice the pit size.


Btw: I thought that 191 won Chairman's twice...so doesn't that get you 3 invites? :D

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

If I may add a thought or two to this, I also think that being a part of the history of FIRST like Team 191 is places responsibility on those team members to carry that honor, intentionally or not. We ask a lot of all of our FIRST teams to represent ourselves, our schools, and FIRST well, using Gracious Professionalism to help us motivate and encourage students, mentors, and sponsors to participate in the FIRST program. The founding teams understand this very very well and we appreciate them - they are very special to all of us. :)

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

This may become important down the road, as more schools join FIRST, there will be more and more teams who want to go to the big dance. I can forsee in the future that only teams who qualify for nationals through whatever means will only be eligible to go.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

Nowadays it seems to be about who can afford to go as much as it does about qualifying. It cost a pretty penny to go.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

Well, it's not guaranteed that they will always be eligible for the Championship (the criteria change every year). But I don't see FIRST removing the Hall of Fame eligibility anytime soon (logically though, eventually they will be forced to as FIRST and the Hall of Fame grows in size).

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

I have a feeling that if FIRST grows too large, they'll start going to a 3-tier competition system, with local, regional, and championship. Rather than having a bunch of regionals, they'd probably have about 10, and call the rest local competitions.

Entirely speculation. Maybe they'll just have a HUGE championship event. Or maybe championships will be hard to get into.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to achieve that spot.
No one can deny the fact that FIRST is growing.
But at the same time FIRST is adding more and more regionals to accomodate Teams. States with more teams happen to have two or more regionals. Correct me if i'm wrong, but Michigan has three regionals.
Every year, FIRST add one or two regionals to the list. If worst come to worst, i'd say we'll have a regionals in every county :p (on a second thought thats really not worse)

Imad

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

With 350-400 slots available at the Championship, it will be a long time before Chairman's teams fill up the event. I am not going to worry about it.

Re: Chairmans at nationals
 

...And don't forget that California has 4