Quote:
Originally Posted by SoftwareBug2.0
You realize that teams still have the option to go play elsewhere, right?
Not only are teams not prohibitted from going to out of district events but it actually does happen in practice. A PNW team qualified for the chamionship by winning the engineering inspiration award at the Hawaii regional last year.
I don't begrudge 2522 for going and winning awards, and they are a team that I have enjoyed competing with, but there are some ways in which the current system is actually less fair than before. Now 2522 is a team that would have qualified for the championship regardless of the regional that they went to, but image if they weren't:
Their championship slot counts toward the PNW team quota which would mean that they would have displaced some other team. And that displaced team would have been denied a slot at championship because a team that they may not have ever gotten the chance to compete against won an award at some unrelated regional.
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If you look at the brief history of district system teams that
1) go to regionals
2) qualify for champs at that regional
3) would likely not qualify for champs at that regional
you would find enough teams to count on one hand that may be "stealing" slots. As regionals likely take place before a hypothetical team's DCMP, their performance at the event or whether or not they attended the event can be easily chalked up to an exercise in earning the requisite points to be a superfluous endeavor.
Most of these perceived stolen slots come out of district system teams earning regional culture changing awards, a practice no longer allowed as of 2017 (for better or for worse).