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Unread 16-10-2012, 23:42
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PayneTrain PayneTrain is offline
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FRC #0422 (The Meme Tech Pneumatic Devices)
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Re: A FIRST Warning From VA

If you pay attention to the overall progress of FRC and Virginia FIRST, I think most would come to the conclusion that certain parts of the state are not growing to expectation.

Of red teams on that list, I believe almost all of those teams have unofficially folded into other teams (I believe JRHS and Clover Hill fold into 1541 as well as other high schools). Outside of team numbers, the state on the whole gained 5 rookies but netted -1 teams for the 2012 season, which is disappointing. Event OPR is significantly down and to put it bluntly, teams visiting VAR from outside the state really put the hurt on teams in-state. If I or someone else knew of a magic bullet to fix this problem, I'm certain it would have been solved.

Virginia, specifically central Virginia, has been a big FIRST concentration for over a decade, but we do not see an ideal distribution of team quality (in my opinion). We are just as old as the midwest, northeast, Greater Toronto, deep south, and Pacific areas but have had difficulty establishing a "marquee team." I guess I would be giving it to 1086 or 1885, but if criteria for a marquee team was CMP win, we would not have any.

Some people will not publicly attest to this, but there is a political climate in some parts of Virginia FIRST that may be a hindrance to this development. It may be the removal and relocation of the NASA sponsorship from VAR to DCR and NCR. You could credit companies that are not heavily involved sponsors like GM or IFI, but I don't think that's fair to great area sponsors like DuPont and Flexicell simply because GM is a megacorp and IFI is fine-tuned to sponsor this kind of stuff. It could be a collection of very inflexible administrators and teachers. Maybe we aren't properly developing in FLL and FTC, but I doubt that is the case. Maybe teams in the area operate on too much of an island. It could be a collection of all of these things.

I don't know if changes coming to the organization in 2014 will either help or hurt teams, but I certainly hope they help. I personally ensured my team would have funds available in case of major sponsor drops, but I know a lot of teams don't have that luxury. Sometimes I wish I was at home so I could help now, but I'm away in college so I can help more later. :/
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