Bills Blog- Yes, I’m already counting down to kickoff 2012

[Marc P.]

Here are a few photos from the Championship in 2002 that will hopefully provide some perspective to the people here who have only known Atlanta Championships.

The first photo is Einstein- note how it's outdoors, where everyone (literally) baked in the Florida sun during opening/closing ceremonies. Also note the canopy/tunnel on the left- that was the robot path to bring your robot to/from Einstein. And as someone above posted, back then you didn't have one field to call home. You'd rotate through the fields each match, and hope the rest of your team knew which field you were on next.

The second photo is the Pit/Field tent. Yeah, that's it. All the pits were in that tent, and the fields were in a similar tent adjacent to it. This is the end of the pit closest to where Einstein was, where colleges and universities had tables set up with information for prospective students. The smaller tent on the left was the "Internet Lounge", where multiple phone lines were provided for laptops to dial up to the internet.

Third photo is the stands for Einstein. Not much else to say other than reiterating the "baking in the Florida sun" part.

The last photo is Archimedes. On the other side of the plastic wall behind the field is the pits. Behind me were bleachers. Yep, only one set of bleachers, on one side of the field, and they were much smaller than what was in St. Louis.

In 2002 there were FRC 291 teams at the championship (count the number of pits from the map Dez posted above). This year in St. Louis there were 351 FRC teams. That's roughly 21% more teams attending the Championship than in 2002. From the pictures of the pit fields I've seen this year, the bleachers provided way more than 21% more seating space than the tent fields in Epcot. From what I've been reading here, it seems there still wasn't enough space for everyone. But as little space as there was, consider that it was still an improvement over the olden days of yore. As a student back then, no one on my team ever complained about lack of seating. We were having too good of a time to notice.