[yarden.saa]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Long times aren't necessarily bad.
Times could be compared against the original pre-play schedule, but that gets overwritten in the FIRST database.

The shorter times are really events that push the limits to get teams the most number of matches possible, but it's a guessing game when the FTA first sets up the play schedule. It can't be changed after they commit themselves, so it reflects how some Regional Directors/FTAs are more conservative than others.

The FTA probably scheduled 9 minute turnarounds to be on the safe side, because of what happened last year.
The schedule can also be setup to have longer times the first morning in order to allow everyone to learn, then pickup the pace with faster times in the afternoon.
It looks like Israel ran just shy of 12 hours the first day to keep up.
A couple of rematches also slowed things down, and I missed the dinner break.
So a corrected time would be 8:57 per match (I adjusted the original post to reflect this).

You'll notice that the Michigan District events are mostly at the bottom, too.
That's because they decided on a fixed 12 matches per team and a small number of competing teams.
They don't need to run that fast to keep up, so the pace can be slower.

There were 2 rematches at the end of the last match in day 2 (out of 3), so it wasn't affecting because we played the amount of matches that we needed, but there was a delay between the matches