[Nemo]

If we prevented powerhouse teams from attending multiple regionals, we would also prevent all the other teams from doing it. That is undesirable, even if one thinks it is okay to put limits on the top teams (I don't).

Example: us. This is going to be the first year that Team 967 goes to a second regional, and we are really excited about it. We have been pushing ourselves pretty hard to improve as a team, and going to a second regional is an important piece of that. We felt that we had a shot at winning going into Kansas City, and although we had a great run, we were defeated in the semis. That would be the end of it if we could only go to one regional: we had a good robot, it had a weakness, and we didn't quite get there. But it's not the end, and so we were able to ask ourselves what we need to do to improve. We have been hard at work to shore up our robot's weaknesses (minibot speed + deployment reliability), and now we think we will be stronger than ever at 10000 Lakes. I consider this phase of the season to be a great motivator and a great learning experience - this is when we can take our existing designs and improve them, although there are significant hurdles to doing that. Limited time, no access to the robot, withholding allowance limits, extremely limited time to install and test upgrades in the pits, etc. But it is doable, and if our new minibot deployment is successful, we are going to feel like a million bucks. That experience, hopefully, will be motivational and inspirational to the team, which is more important than taking home hardware.

Attending multiple regional competitions is a crucial part of the path to becoming a really strong team, I think. And we have a lot of work to do if we want to achieve that goal... our experiences at the Championship (via waitlist) have made that pretty clear.