[Al Skierkiewicz]

Kevin,
Your proposal will work in some areas and not in others. Many teams are struggling to get moving on that Saturday before ship. I know our team is working feverishly to get things complete on the robot, software issues fixed and prep work for our Sunday pre-ship party. In other areas, teams are so spread out, that visits are near impossible. We can figure that at midwest regionals, (Minnesota, Milwaukee, Midwest, BMR and St. Louis) teams will travel up to three hours on average, for teams outside the regional city. In rare cases we may have teams who travel up to six or more hours. i.e. from Arkansas or Ohio to Chicago. What may be more important is to inspect rookies prior to ship. Pre-ship parties should be made mandatory for rookies where travel does not prevent it.
As far as build, I can't tell you how many teams ship the robot and then analyze what they have done. Realizing their idea is flawed they plan on rebuild on Thursday at a regional. To not allow this, IMHO, would weaken the competition and hurt the students. It has always been my stance to tender all decisions based on the student impact. If the decision we make in any way wrongly impacts the students we need to rethink that decision. Experienced mentors know that the game changes throughout the season and to not allow design change to compensate weakens the competition.