[JamesBrown]

I was 100% against districts coming into it. I started competing in New England, and loved the regionals there. The production value was incredible, and Dean, Woodie and company were always around. I knew there was no way you could recreate that in a High School Gym, and I thought that would hurt the experience.

That being said, I loved the CHS district model this year. For the record, we are a small (10 Students), low budget (approximately $10k raised through the district events.) Who qualified for both District Championships, and Worlds. We had to scramble twice for money (for District Champs and now for worls) but we have been successful in adding sponsors and nearly tripling our budget for the year.

The atmosphere is different, but I like it better. Regionals were all or nothing. You could have the best robot in the world, but if your partner broke in the finals, you may find yourself missing out on a trip to championships. Now, two solid performances earn you a trip to DCMP, and a third puts you in the mix for St. Louis. This takes some sting out of tough losses. In Blacksburg we lost an encoder in the Quarter Finals (the first thing to go wrong for us all weekend) that cost us some points in the Semis and ended our chances of winning the competition. In Doswell everything came together for us, but 401, our opponent in the finals lost a tread, in a regional this would have been devastating to them, likely costing them a trip to St. Louis. However with Districts, they already had accumulated enough points to move on, and we knew we would see them again in College Park (where 401 and 122 got their revenge on us and 1086).

We have a good robot this year, and a good drive team, we would have been competitive at a regional if we were still in that system, however winning a regional is a combination of having a good or great bot and a little bit of luck.

If we had competed in a regional instead we would have played 10-15 matches, and had maybe a 1 in 5 shot of making it to St. Louis. In the district system, we have played 50 matches (35 for the same cost as that regional would have been) and we punched our ticket to St Louis for the first time in this teams history.