[Pamela]

I have always personally liked the closeness of regionals better. I love the fact that people stay and watch almost all the matches at the regionals, it makes competition so much more exciting. the thing I enjoy about nationals though, is the distance people travel to all gather in one spot to share their ideas, robots, and spirit with one another. Their is no other competition quite like it. FIRST touches many peoples lives and brings people from all walks of life together. It is great to see teams with diversity, and jocks, and "geeks", and people from every group come togther for one cause. The excitement and enourmous size of the nationals is what people remeber, if the event became smaller and more select it would discourage teams if they could never quite make it to that level. Could you imagine FIRST without the nationals open to everyone? What would you feel is your team wasn't good enough at regionals to make it to the national competition. If FIRST wants to encourage team work it will be a very hard thing to make the nationals open to only high seeds in the regionals. Also, if it was onyl open to regional winners, what would happen when a team who could only afford to make it to one regional wins? How will they make it to nationals? Or if your team can't afford to attend a regional and could only make nationals? Would that team automatically get into the national? Just some thoughts on selective nationals....