Back Heavy Regionals

[Jherbie53]

I was just on TBA and was looking at how many regionals were being played each week. I noticed that there were only 5 regionals the first two weeks and at least 10 the last three. ( I counted new york as week 5 ) Now if there are venues with open dates earlier in the season, would you like to see a couple of regionals moved into the first couple of weeks or do you like it the ways it is.

[Guy Davidson]

I think there's an advantage to playing more regionals in later week - by then, the refs know the rules better, the GDC had the opportunity to clear up and misunderstandings in the rules, and gameplay is generally better. I voted keep everything the same.

[IndySam]

We need room to grow. Those early open spots will start to fill up in the coming years.

Also many of those later week regionals correspond with College spring breaks

[Nawaid Ladak]

what people don't notice, is that regionals are moving DOWN the list. here are a couple of examplesd from last year

Florida Regional
2007 - Week 2 Regional
2008 - Week 3 Regional

Great Lakes Regional
2007 - Week 2 Regional
2008 - Week 5 Regional

Bayou Regional
2007 - Week 2 Regional
2008 - Week 5 Regional

so it's not that some need to be moved up, it's some need to be moved BACK up.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

MWR moved up... that's the only one that I know of. It's never been a week 1 regional.

[Caio]

I think its like Indy says, some are based on when people have a break.

And I think it isn't so much that they plan it that way, its that they have to go off of when the field or area is open. There's probably a lot of things that go on in the locations that the regionals are set up in, so they have to take what they can get.

Just a possibility...

But if they are the ones deciding, leaving more for the later weeks do tend to have the results that Sumadin said.

[Chrisms]

my idea, probably wrong, but just a thought... FIRST is probably trying to move regionals that have a knack for dealing with kinks in the system, and run smoothly up the list, this way they can set precedents for the later week regionals. If they have too many in the first few weeks, you'll get contradicting calls more often... and more teams will say "but, in NJ, we would have won!" etc etc.

not so say one staff is better than the other.. don't get me wrong, you're all great

[Jherbie53]

I know about the venue need to be set up with certain schools spring break, but what if you could have any venue at anytime. Lets say you could have a Indy regional at the Pacers arena, or a New York regional in MSG?

Hypothetically, in ten years their are 60 regionals across the globe. At least 10-12 of them are not in North America, and 10 more are not in USA. The regionals are spread out over six weeks. Would you rather have 7 regionals the first three weeks and 13 regionals the last three? Or would you want a more balanced setup, like 9 the first three and 11 the last three?

My original point was really that I noticed such a big difference for the early weeks to the later weeks, and if you could change the number of regionals, all venues open all weeks, would you?

[johnr]

i liked the way it turned out this year. the students will not miss any school this year. western and great lakes falling on school's easter break. don't think the kids like it .
not sure if this is a point to bring up because it might be only revelant to mid west area,but maybe first could look at where along with time. i believe western,clevland and canada all fall the same week. maybe something like if you can drive to a regional in say eight hours try not to put them the same week.
of course as big as first is getting you might be lucky to get into local regional in the near future.