1280 teams are registered. Less than thirty to go to match last year's total.
Teams don't seem to show up until they've been accepted into their first Regional, so there may be a bunch of teams sitting on some wait list for one of the many full Regionals. We have a couple here. Anyone else know of any teams that show up as registered, but didn't make it on to any published Regional list yet?
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Hi Karthik,
I did take some liberties in the interest of simplifying my earlier
explanation.
I wasn't referring to the generic "wait list" term we see on TIMS. When we click that, TIMS lists us as payment pending anyway. It's that sub-division I'm referring to.
Sorry about mangling the example of Hawaii and the Pending count. I believe it proceeds that way, but the general public doesn't get to see the count going up and down after Open Capacity is reached.
After Open Capacity is reached and the Pending count goes to zero, FIRST calls everything not on the Team List the "wait list," however, it is my understanding that FIRST's wait list is just a common name for the paid list and the payment pending list. I bet they both still individually exist internally.
Really, just a first level division where other attributes may come into play for final team selection, as Kim referred to. I bet any pending team that pays moves to a higher spot on the wait list.
It seems reasonable for FIRST to give preference to paid entrants (or even partially paid entry fees) given how hard it is for many teams to raise the necessary cash. Just looking at last year's registration I saw a lot of teams signing up for events they didn't intend or couldn't afford to go to. I assume they were backup regionals or last minute
maneuvering. Some must have been based on the hope that fundraising would go well.
I don't know what the incidence is of teams signing up and just not carrying through with payment, but awarding a spot to an unpaid team would risk wasting a slot and denying another team who could pay for it.
Anyone aware of any case of FIRST refunding payment, because a paid team didn't make it off the wait list?
