[waialua359]

As a HOF team, I think this is absolutely a great idea.

HOF teams were given the opportunity to give input during the summer about how we felt about the proposed (and now official) change to the RCA.
The biggest concern as shared by others here was making sure enough judges were available to accommodate an increase no. of teams competing for it, especially at bigger regionals.

Every year, there are great teams that get left out of an RCA based on the regional they choose to enter in.
Its just so much better to take it out of the equation, for the most part.

I can still see manipulation by entering at a later event, where teams may anticipate others winning it at a prior regional or week.
On the other hand, this is no different than teams choosing what regionals to enter as they try to win a blue banner or any categorical award.

Ultimately, I like the idea because the pool of teams competing for the CCA just got that much tougher, and there will be much less worthy teams getting left out of the running by the time CMP comes around.

I just hope one day, the EI award gets to be either judged or a submission can be entered similar to the Entrepreneurship Award during build season, having judges come by the pits to do specific interviews.
Based on my own personal observation, its seems that EI judging varies widely depending on the regional you attend, including CMP. How do judges determine which single team gets it out of 400 teams at CMP?
We won the CMP EI award in 2008. Yet never won it in our 14 year history at the 27 regionals we attended. Go figure?
Good luck to everyone this season!