[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by Ari423

My team was in the exact situation you are describing. We weren't sure if we would make it to the MAR DCMP this year, as we were right on the line of acceptance. We haven't made it in a long time (probably around 5-6 years) so we didn't budget for the $4000 attendance fee. After the last district competition in week 6, when we realized we were going to be invited, we were extatic. That lasted for about an hour, before we realized we didn't have the money to attend and payment was due that Wednesday. Three days is not enough time to raise $4000 from sponsors. Thankfully after some begging and crying our school gave us some money and members asked their families to donate so we were able to raise what we needed to attend (I think we ended up submitting the money a day late).

It was an amazing experience, but the planning (much of which I did myself) was horrendous. Arranging rides (we didn't have enough money for a bus), finding someone's pickup truck to load the robot and tools into (no trailer on short notice), getting permission to miss school. All of it was a nightmare. I personally love the district model because it lets teams like us who tend not to win regionals (never have since 1999) qualify for CMP, but I wish it cost less and gave teams more time to prepare to attend DCMP.

In the end, we were only a few qualification points away from going to CMP. Honestly, im not sure that we would have been able to attend if we did make it because we exhausted all of our funds, extra funds, and potential new sponsors trying to afford DCMP. Next season we will try do leave more room in our budget for further competitions, but that's not easy for a team that struggles to afford building and competing with a robot.

First of all, congrats on pulling that together - $4000 in a few days is impressive. I'm wondering what FIRST will do moving forward in terms of making this easier on teams - 2.5 weeks in between DCMP and CMP is not a lot of time to pull together another $5000, plane tickets, and hotel rooms for 20-30 people. As more of FIRST goes to the district model, this will only get worse, and you have to wonder - once most/all of FRC is in districts, what will CMP registration look like? With the current system, it would be a nightmare.