Quote:
Originally Posted by coalhot
After volunteering at the Greater Pittsburgh regional this year, I can say that I truly miss the days of regionals in the MAR area. You got a full day to work out issues, get inspected, play real matches that are being reffed as they will be for the rest of the event. And if the practice day is run correctly, each team gets ~8 matches to play in.
This also leads me to question why the MAR area needs the district system. This may be a topic for another thread, and has probably been beaten to death already; but seeing that there are 110 team in MAR, with 55 making it to MAR championships (and I don't recall there being that much growth in rookie teams this past year), why not do another regional into the pot that used to be there already? (Philadelphia and Trenton)
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Coming a region outside the district system into the MAR district system, I much,
much prefer districts. Our district practice day is far more productive with six hours of unbag time prior (this has replaced a full day of practice, and this is one of the last things I would want to give back for more practice matches). I am a firm believer that having six hours of unbag time available in our shop before each district event has dramatically increased our team's competitiveness the past two years, and it is one of the reasons that many teams have found they can get away with not having a practice robot (a big cost savings).
The district system allows more teams to make it into eliminations, more teams the opportunity to win awards, and more matches is a huge, huge plus. Also, I lost less work days and students lost less school through going to our two district events than I did going to the Greater DC Regional or MAR Champs this year. Districts are one thing I would not change.
For ourselves, I'm not worried about travel costs. We are on the western fringes of MAR, and we have hotel and transportation fees for every in-season competition we go to. That was five competitions this year, and we may do the same for several offseasons as well. We have a pay-as-you-go model, which scales well with the number of competitions each year.