[PayneTrain]

We attended 2 regionals in the traditional system. We walked (yes) to one of them every year. We traveled anywhere between 2 hours by car to 5 hours by plane to go to our second regional. The travel event always featured lodging. The travel event had a wide range of costs from under $100 per student including meals and lodging in DC to "I'm way too embarrassed to release that number, holy hell, we paid that much for a regional and no one fired me?" for Alamo. The BBQ was pretty great though.

We attended 3 district events. Week 2 and Week 3 were travel events while Week 4 was a local event. Both events cost a little over $100 per student. Week 2 was within our system and a 3 hour drive and the Week 3 was outside of our system and carried with it a 6 hour drive. Also I stopped for Fuddruckers, so it was closer to 7. Apparently I was not supposed to stop at Fuddruckers but I was very hungry. Our Week 4 event required a 1 hour drive so we didn't do lodging. I don't know if it stopped smelling like horse manure on the second day or if I just got used to it.

Our DCMP was about 2.5ish hours away without traffic, through the bustling construction project known as the DC Beltway. We stayed at a hotel there, obviously. I think the cost there was around $175 because of geography and extra nights we stayed there compared to other events.

According to The Blue Alliance, 422 competed in 93 matches and walked home with 5 trophies in my time as a student (2009-2012). In the 2016 season, 422 has played in 70 matches --so far-- and has walked away with... 5 trophies.

"Bbut Wil, it's not about the trophies or the matches!"

It's a measuring stick I can use that is indicative of multiple things.

We put in a rookie driver and human player this year with ZERO offseason experience. For a variety of reasons, I would have found pushing bamboo into my nailbeds to be a better use of time and energy than competing in an offseason in the 2015 season. We decided to flip our offseason budget into and OOD event pretty easily and boy did it pay off. The kids loved that event more than Championships! We were able to develop our drive team over the entire season.

That leads into the two big things for me. The ability to actually have a comprehensive season helps me as a coach both chart the development of our program and use milestones that parallel that of traditional sports to leverage additional support of my program. The district system format also axes the dreadful "win or die" mentality that comes with the traditional regional format. We would have NEVER had an opportunity to have the students who grinded out that robot design win an Industrial Design Award at a regional. The talent pool is too thick at the top for technical awards. In the regional system, we would be staying at home after finishing as semifinalists at 2 events and finalists at the other 2; instead we finished 5th in our district system and are advancing to championships.

The coverage and support from the school has started to blossom again for the first time in years, and I have the pleasure of watching the kids come back and retool the team after every event to help get the results they want.

I really do worry about how the extended cost and support requirements are going to affect teams and volunteers long term. Stan and the VirginiaFIRST team are turning into fundraising machines and I hope that means that FIRST Chesapeake will use that to transfer the region into the PNW model. I know we can afford the fees but we know that is both a rare position to be in and a difficult one to stay in. Volunteering long term presents both threats and opportunities. I saw a lot of the same faces at events and those same faces tended to look a tad more beaten as the season progressed. VirginiaFIRST has an opportunity to engage with the larger teams near the district sites to identify and train up volunteers of all ages, talents, skills, and importance if the lines are open so the same people aren't stuck doing events 12 weeks a year until they are ready to turn to dust.