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Originally Posted by Frank
So, if a given District has 10 percent of all FRC teams, they get 10 percent of the slots (excluding pre-qualified slots) at Championship.
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This is rather interesting. Last year Michigan had about 10% of all FRC teams. If this continues next year then they will have about 60 slots at Championship. Only 4 or 5 of the teams at the Michigan State Championship will
not qualify for St. Louis. At this point the state championship is essentially meaningless in deciding who advances. In fact, many teams can completely skip MSC and still qualify for World's. This seems to go against the point of the state championship.
How can Michigan solve this problem? Increase the size of MSC by moving to a new venue? Adding divisions like World's?
Jim Zondag addressed this issue a few years ago in his
whitepaper.
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Originally Posted by Jim Zondag
Q30: “What will you do when the State Championship is no longer large enough to house all of the good teams in the State?”
A30: This will be a good problem to have  . We are still many years away from reaching any real limits in this regard. That said, if our population of teams continues to grow at its current rate, the threshold to make it to the State Championship will continue to rise. When we launched the District System in 2009, 1/2 of our team population advanced to the State Championship. After 4 years, this percentage is down to 1/3rd. By 2016, we project this percentage to fall to below 1/4th. Entry will keep getting harder, and the competition will continue to increase. There are over 700 public high schools in our state plus hundreds more private schools. If we grow large enough to reach Dean Kamen’s goal of a team in every school, then perhaps someday we will need to create a second Regional Championship. We will cross this bridge when we come to it. |
Well, I think we've arrived at the bridge, now what?