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Posted by Nate Smith.

Other on team #66, GM Powertrain/Willow Run HS, from Eastern Michigan University and GM Powertrain.

Posted on 9/12/2000 7:28 AM MST


In Reply to: Re: Midwest Regional=Empty Stadium posted by Raul on 9/12/2000 6:07 AM MST:



: The Midwest regional will not be anywhere near as competitive as it was last year. I personally think this regional could be a bust and FIRST made a big mistake here. I certainly hope that I am wrong!

Anyone who's been watching my posts on here over the past couple years probably has noticed by now that I have a habit of taking the underrepresented side in discussions like this(or at least bringing up some of the points that the other side would,) and I'm not going to disappoint anybody by not doing that this time....

While traditionally, the majority of the 'big name' teams who attended Great Lakes also made the trek to Chicago, this caused both of these events to be the largest regionals of the season(Great Lakes #1[67 teams], Midwest #2[52 teams].) And while this does make for an exciting competition, it also makes for less play time per team, which means less time to debug potentially serious problems, as well as a more 'random' seeding position, giving less time for the qualifying points to even out after a bad match. I think by putting the Great Lakes and Midwest events the same weekend(and by putting a cap on the number of teams at Great Lakes,) they are forcing teams to choose between the two events, and with the growth of teams in the Midwest area, it will balance itself out. Perhaps not with both events having as many teams as last year, but I have a feeling from what I've seen in the past that the numbers will not be as skewed as some are predicting. In addition, with the move of Great Lakes to MSU, it's still a 'drive there and get a hotel' situation for the majority of the teams, so it's just a matter of how far you want to drive, rather than a 'drive & get a hotel' vs. a 'stay at home and just worry about parking' issue.

Also, this change may be a sign of things to come....if indeed FIRST is working toward a day where each team attends one and only one regional in an attempt to qualify for nationals, it would make sense that they want teams to attend one closer to home, so that the best teams from each geographic region, and not necessarily just the 'best teams who could afford to travel to event X,' would be represented at the nationals.

This has been my attempt to delve into the minds of those at FIRST...not always a safe thing to do, I realize =) but this could very well be how they're looking at things....it's just a matter of seeing how things work out this season to know for sure...

Nate