Quote:
Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter
It's fairly easy to take a day off of school to go to a co-curricular event and employers are usually quite understanding about taking a day off to work with your team at a Robotics event! Extremely few people are omitted from a Thursday -> Saturday event for employment/education reasons. By contrast, those that have their day of worship on Saturday or Sunday are asked to put a day of a competition above worshiping God... Some teams, as a result, are not able to attend competition on either the second day or on the third day, which clearly puts you out of the running for success on the field.
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I understand the desire to keep Sunday off in Thursday-->Saturday events for reducing religious overlap, but at least in my experience missing Thursday for school/work is incredibly common. Even when we were based in a specific school (not religious), only the essential crew was allowed to miss Thursday. Many frown upon the number of missed days required in an FRC season. Many, even most, of our mentors perennially missed all or most of Thursday. It's a serious trade-off and quite a bit of time to miss, especially from non-sponsoring employers and universities.
Anecdotally, but it's just as common if not more for or members to miss for work/school as for religion. I believe the regional and district events moving towards limiting weekdays are just trying to balance this for their students, mentors, volunteers, venues, VIPs, etc. Having some of both seems to be a good compromise.