[Bongle]

I crunched the numbers on this once, and it turns out that something like 75% of teams only attend one regional.

That said, I have been on teams that attended double-regionals:


Why? Because after 6 weeks of hard work building the robot, it doesn't make much sense to only go to one regional. Regionals are the funnest part, why not go to as many as you can financially and mentally afford to?

What is it like? The first one has a much lower level of pressure ("this is just a warmup, don't worry about it"). You can try out more tactics, there is less of a feeling that you can't try anything novel because if you blow this regional, that's it for the year. The second one you feel much more confident because you have a fairly good grip on what works and what doesn't. There is obviously also the bonus that your robot will generally work better at the second than the first because of fixes you may have applied during the first regional.

Worth it? Yes

Send Entire Team? Just the mechanical team went to the first regional, as it was a 'warm-up' regional. Many more school members, parents, sponsors, etc came to the 2nd one.

How far apart? Being in Canada, the least expensive option is to do Waterloo and GTR, which means 1 week apart. School-wise, I suppose it'd make more sense to have a wider spacing.

Multiple Regionals + Champs? We did in 2006, because we qualified and had never been before.