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Re: FTC Leagues
We did leagues in Iowa last year. A few notes:
All teams in the league played in the league championship. A handful of those advanced to State.
League meets have less teams and no judging, so the volunteer force is much smaller. We got by on something like 12 volunteers compared to something like 50 for a qualifier event in previous years. It's still an issue to recruit people for so many events. We had a couple of parents step up to be our volunteer coordinators, which helped immensely. We still funneled contacts and helped them recruit, but they could at least organize us to figure out what positions needed attention.
Setup is still an issue, but if you have some overlap between events, people get pretty fast at it eventually, so it's less important to have lots of setup time after the first event is in the books. Next year there's no Field Control System, so you can scratch that from the to-do list.
Finding venues is an interesting process, to be sure. Just remember that you can get away with using a smaller space than you're used to for 24 qualifiers. We used a small gym at a middle school, a theater at a library, and a small high school gym. If there's a space somewhere that looks good, it's often possible to talk that place into hosting you for free if you can get their ear and tell them what FIRST is all about.
Our leagues were 12 teams each, and even that got repetitive after multiple events. Only having 5 teams in league does sound boring unless they're the type of teams that iterate a lot between events and surprise you each time.
Not being able to mix with other leagues unless we advance to State was a huge drawback of leagues for me. Not having judging or playoff rounds are also big drawbacks. In my opinion, qualifiers provide a superior event experience to teams. I can empathize with the overworked key volunteers in Iowa, so I understand why they made the change. I'd prefer a future with a lot more event volunteers and the return of the qualifier event system.
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