Since last year was our rookie year, we could only really attend one regional. Luckily though, it took us only 10-15 minutes to get to the competitions since we were based in Raleigh, too.
This year, we attended two district events: Wake County and Campbell University/Johnston Community College. The first event only took us 20-25 minutes to drive to. However for the second event, some members of our team required lodging because it took them 1.5-2 hrs. to drive since they lived up far north in Wake County. As for me and others who lived near our workspace in Southern Wake County, we opted for the 45 min. daily commute.
Our team, too, qualified for DCMP in Charlotte, NC. This was around 2.5 to 3 hours to get to and our entire team required lodging.
Compared to last year, I would say I prefer the District system much better even though I only fully understood it after qualifying for DCMP. Our team was exposed to much more opportunities to fine tune our robot and get to know how to work with other teams. Cheering and lodging together additionally furthered our team's unity especially with 20+ new members this year. We lost in the semifinals at Wake Country and we won at Campbell most only because of the great generosity of Triple Strange (#1533) and The Flying Platypi (#2655)
. Our robots for the 2015 & 2016 season performed pretty decently with all-around focus on the gameplay, but our team were very successful on our strategy for getting us through. However, we were all extremely surprised for qualifying World Championships in St. Louis. Like Dezion from T-Rex (#4935) mentioned earlier, we had accumulated enough ranking points especially from DCMP.
I believe the District system is a great way to level out the playing field for all teams; more teams have an opportunity to qualify which greatly increases the competition even for teams that perform well from season to season. This system offers a dynamic experience and I think teams will benefit globally especially considering the current rate of new teams joining FIRST. We hope to have a great time at St. Louis and we appreciate all of the hard work and Gracious Professionalism all teams contributed to this awesome season!