[the_godfaubel]

The negative part about this change to me, and likely many others, is the fact that the experience just won't be the same. Someone brought up that they would pretty much be seeing many of the same teams that they have been competing with for the prior two months. Where is the fun in that?

The exciting part about Championships, for me, was getting to collaborate and talk with teams from around the country and the world. With this change, you lose a lot of that. Being a college student and beginning my engineering journey, I now enjoy talking with teams about why they came to the design choices they made and how it could be used elsewhere to benefit society. I know for a fact that I was looking forward to seeing some teams at the Championships this year to ask about these very things. Under the new plan, I would not be to talk with some of the teams that I have on my list to talk to because of the "geographical boundaries" that would occur.

I really don't know why FIRST has decided to split the Championships, especially after the excitement of last year. Maybe they got too caught up in the Recognition part of FIRST and forgot that the teams were already doing a great job of spreading knowledge of STEM around the world.