Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffrafa
I think what he's hitting at is not that each team is getting fewer matches than before (although this is the case in some situations), but that each regional is having notably fewer matches than in the past. Sure, 2004 was 2v2, and therefore required significantly more matches to grant teams as much time on the field. But just like 2004, the rounds are only 2 minutes and 15 seconds long. If Florida was able to manage 104 matches of that length in 2004, why are they doing only 65% as many rounds this year? Surely setting up two additional robots per match dosen't make a match cycle take 50% longer.
Since our team's rookie year in 2004 we have seen a significant decline in the number of matches we play per regional. I don't have any hard numbers for each event, but our rookie year we got between 10 and 12 matches at both the Pacific NW Regional and the Sacremento Regional. This year, despite being 3v3 now over the 2v2 the first year, we only got 8 matches - largely due to the regionals growing. Portland has gone from roughly 36 teams in 2004 to 54 teams this year.
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The reason your team is getting matches is what you said, more teams. With more teams it is inevitable that you will have fewer matches. Every regional has given teams a minimum of 8 matches, and several have given more. If you try and cram more matches in, you give each team less time to make repairs between matches, less time for pre-match strategy, etc. There is no need to play more matches than you can comfortably fit into a schedule. Of all the competitions I listed with 116 earlier, 5 of the 7 had 56-66 teams (the VCUs and Chesapeakes), and each played 7 or 8 matches (9 for 2006 VCU because we played as a "surrogate"). I think that's a decent amount considering the number of teams participating.