Quote:
Originally Posted by seanwitte
I was unable to find anything that states what the participation requirements are for the off-season events. Do you have to be affiliated with FIRST or can anyone enter? Do you have to be in High School? Are there age requirements or can anyone with a robot pay the fee, show up, and compete?
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FIRST has typically been hands-off for anything to do with the off-season.
As has been stated the local organizers can pretty much do whatever they want with the rules and invitees. The model used by most FRC off-season events is usually based on the past year game, but really you could almost do whatever you want. FIRST does "let" organizers use an official field from FIRST (with limits). We are lucky in this area that the Goddard field is an option. With Mike Wade's passing, the system for that is being ironed out but there is a lot of support to keep this an option from a lot of dedicated people included those at Goddard.
Running an off-season FRC event is a lot of work. But it also can be a lot of fun, and is a team-building venture of another sort-working with lots of people.
There were numerous "off-season" or "on-season, but not official" scrimmages this year involving Vex robots. Same for the FIRST LEGO League robots.