[pschre]

Team 806 did two regionals for the first time last year, NYC and Long Island. They're geographically close, so I didn't consider it to be a long, team-building bus ride, though that sounds nice. When we went to Atlanta in 2004, the entire trip and stay was definitely a fun bonding experience, we need to do that again sometime.

I echo the sentiments of a bunch of people by saying that I considered the major advantage of 2 regionals to be extra real-game experience, the equivalent of which cannot really be found in any practice. (Maybe a full field scrimmage with a team who has the means to build a full field and invite teams who have a practicable bot by the end of build season, but we don't know any such team locally.) The only downside was that our teammates were almost, borderline, showing signs of getting sick of each other by the 2nd regional. It's just A LOT of time to be spending with the same people, meeting 46 consecutive days during build season as we did, plus regionals.

It's also never a bad thing to see and scout a different field of robots and teams than you're used to seeing, and making new relationships. I know the field crew at the NYC Mega-Celebration has a hell of a job and they do it very well, but we got several more qualifying matches in at Long Island and now we feel a little spoiled and want that at our home regional, somehow.

Unfortunately, our budget started off this year 1/3 less than what it was last year, which put a 2nd regional just out of our reach without some significant sponsorship...and getting sponsorship has always been an area of weakness for my team. So it's not over till payment deadline comes around, but I'm not positive we'll make 2 this year.

We've wanted to go to Las Vegas for a while, ever since I got a mini light-up Las Vegas sign and, for lack of anything else to do with it, made it a main fixture in our workshop. Kind of inspired everyone. But in addition to the lack of funds, the Las Vegas regional this year seems to be Easter weekend, and it's against team policy to compete that weekend. Catholic school and all. I'm interested to check out those aforementioned white papers to see how many team travel long distances between regionals, maybe bypassing several other geographically closer ones.