[Kris Verdeyen]

I have no problem either with teams going to multiple regionals. If you have the means, and the regionals are nearby, then go for it! The problem is that, when teams get those three days after a regional, it's after every regional. So those few teams that can attend three regionals can have more than one additional week with their robot than those that only attend one.

You can also attend nationals by winning one of the regional chairman's awards, or one of the technology awards.

I'm not a big fan either of the regionals-as-qualifying-event paradigm, but it's a happy problem to have - FIRST is growing! FIRST was stuck between a rock and a hard place for this one. The bottom line was that there are too many teams for them to all to go to nationals. So some must not be allowed to go. They chose evens and odds. (A better solution might be to go by the year a team joined, so that all rookie teams can go to nats.) Alternatively, in order to keep teams from losing that helpful spirit, they could have said that winning a regional doesn't help a team go to nats, but that eliminates a lot of teams with great robots. So they chose the lesser of two evils in letting regional winners go on, trusting the participants of FIRST to abide by the creed of gracious professionalism, and not allow the prize of going to Florida to cloud their judgement. Was that the correct assumption? Only time will tell, but I'd like to think that it was.