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Originally Posted by Levin571
although this thread has been made before, our team is currently looking into getting an off season tournement going and i was wondering if anyone give us some tips and ideas of how to get one started.
any advice or ideas would be most helpful
also this can be a place to get new ideas for off-season events flowing
thanks!!!
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Lots of factors in running an off season competition, but the key thing before doing anything is see if there is a need to do so. It may sounds just complete fun to do an off season event, but make sure you got enough teams who will participate before you invest the time and resource in it.
For example, in California we do California Games in the fall. FIRST teams in the area can take advantage of the event and introduce their new member as well as their school administration to the competition. It is especially valuable to rookie team who never been in a competition before.
Once you discover the need for an event, may it be in the summer or fall, that's when you figure out 2 important things: Location and time.
Depending on the colleges you have around your area, you may be able to set it up at a community college. High School gym will be ok if you have the necessary pit space. The key is to make sure you have enough space for the field, the pit area, and enough seats for audience.
Then you should look at dates. Try not to have them on major holiday, religious holidays, or test dates. For sample, Jewish holiday and SAT days will be bad days for you.
After those two factor, you have to figure out how much money you need to get a field to the event, be it shipping from FIRST, or build your own. You have to count costs for carpets as well.
Now that the easy part is done, here are the hard parts:
Registration system for teams to sign up and pay entry fee.
Schedule the agenda of the day and stick to it.
Lay out the pit area so teams have enough space to work in them.
Find volunteers to inspect robots, ref the matches, score the matches, queue the teams, and coordinate the volunteers.
Food for participating teams, such as concession or BBQ.
Signage for the event.
A/V system such as a projector and a big screen, or paper score boards.
Music with a DJ.
Awards for teams.
Judging of the awards.
Field setup and tear down.
Clean up the place so it is as clean as it was before the event.
And finally:
Learn what you did wrong, what can be better, and repeat the steps above except next time you do it better and better.
Good luck! Post more specific questions if you got them. Otherwise it is hard to cover everything.