Last year Team 190 attended Virginia and Southern Cali regionals as opposed to ones closer to home. We do this for a couple reasons.
- We always select one regional that is during spring break, typically the first week in March. Usually the majority of students attending competitions are college or HS seniors, which means they have that week off. It's that many less classes we miss.
- We like to spread the name of WPI. Our college is a wonderful and huge supporter of FIRST. Through both funding for the team and scholarship money to FIRST students on all teams, they are awesome. We like to go to new and different places to promote WPI and reach and audience that may not otherwise here of our school. At these 'far' competitions, we usually have a table with WPI materials manned by team members to talk about WPI (hope you visited!)
- It's fun to play against/with new and different teams. As opposed to simply going to NH and UTC, and playing against much of the same field of robots, we enjoy broadening our horizons and playing with different teams.
- Sometimes the costs are not much more at all then renting buses and vans for the days and hotels (or not) closer to home.
So look for us hopefully someplace new next year as well (maybe AZ, MI, IL, who knows!)... plus at some more off-season comps besides the many around here... can wait to see what fun gets stirred up then!
See y'all at nationals. Go Archimedes
