Michigan, be honest, how is the district model?

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by gblake

Amen - Concentrations of teams do not respect state boundaries. Perhaps in a rather distant future enough teams will exist in enough locations to make this largely irrelevant, but that day isn't today.

Blake

Tell me about it. There is 2 parts of the area- Louisville and "not Louisville". the latter is the half in Indiana. You can guess where most of the wealth and resources are that could be used for FIRST.

I am the first and as it looks, the only Student living on the Indiana side of the Louisville to ever be involved in FIRST, let alone FRC.

The only reason I was involved (and knew about FIRST) was my 3 years prior on 1747 HBR In West Lafayette, IN. There, you could say i was umm, very devoted. Heck, my devotion earned me a 2010 Dean's list semi-finalist pin. You could say I was addicted to FIRST. As luck would have it, there was a team across the river who was happy to have a Veteran from another team become part of their family. It may have involved 45 minutes driving each way, but I was determined to have FRC as part of my Senior year in High school. And believe me, my devotion didn't lessen.

Had I not been exposed back at my old high school, I would have never known FIRST existed, let alone have the motivation to become part of it.

due to this, if Kentucky ever went to a district setup, my dream of bringing FIRST to the Indiana side of the river city, would be much more difficult. As it is, the nearest regional is back in my former home in West Lafayette at Purdue's Boilermaker regional, where my current team, 2783, has gone for the last 3 years. making districts state restricted would make it worse as many would see it as too dumb as to do anything you have to go 3 hours north on I65 instead of 15 minutes south.

I know that was a bit off topic, but that's my thoughts on turning FIRST into a state restricted sport.

Either way, GO FIRST! it must be good if i am willing to burn 1.5hr travel every day of build season for it (plus the same for the 8 weeks following for withholding/practice bot duties).

[Craig Roys]

You do not need to do a State/Regional Championship in order to benefit from the district model...by that I mean if you don't have a high enough concentration of teams for a state or regional championship then don't. However, teams could still benefit from playing more smaller competitions for less.

Say there's only 40 teams in a particular region; would you rather play one regional for $4-5k and get around 8-10 matches and maybe eliminations; or would you want to play two events against the same teams for the same amount of money and get 24 matches (12 per event) plus any elimination matches? Maybe you've got 60 teams in a particular area; then you could put on three 40 team competitions where all the teams register for any 2 of them. I'm sure there are many other ways to organize something around this idea.

The whole idea is more matches for less money. More time competing with the robot you spent 6+ weeks working on. If FIRST is going to continue to grow, it has to become more affordable for teams with more ROI. I'll admit that I was a little bit skeptical when the FiM system was initially introduced, but I can't see ever going back. Our first 3 years as a team (2006-2008) we averaged between 12 and 13 matches per season from our initial investment. In our past 3 years (2009-2011) we averaged between 33 and 34 matches per season from our initial investment (which, I believe, was less than the initial registration cost for the first 3 years). If you take out eliminations since those aren't guaranteed matches; then we averaged around 9 matches per season for the first 3 years for our initial registration vs a guaranteed 24 matches per season now from our initial registration. Even if there were no State Championship, I would still prefer this model because it gets you more playing time for less money.

[Enigma's puzzle]

If the area doesnt have enough teams to hold the "state" or "regional" championship, they could always use a similar point system to what is used in Michigan. And then adjust it for the number of people they send to championships.

Hypothetically,If the region gets 10 bids and has 4 districts, the 4 chairmen award winners get in and the 6 highest scoring teams, based on that similar point based achievement system.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

...
due to this, if Kentucky ever went to a district setup, my dream of bringing FIRST to the Indiana side of the river city, would be much more difficult.
...

Remember, it isn't the notion of a "District model" that is the root of this situation. The root cause is that so many folks have a knee jerk tendency toward drawing district boundaries along state borders.

Force them to realize that being in one state or another (or one county/city or another) has nothing to do with being on a robotics team, and tell them to tell local and state officials that you think both they and the robotic programs simply don't need or want to create artificial boundaries at state borders.

When the old canard about state/local funds only being used to pay for folks inside of a boundary gets raised, simply tell them to go right ahead and do it; but to not confuse that support with saying that tournaments or other activities can only include those supported teams. They will find a compromise fast enough if folks like yourself stick to your guns. "Rules" like those get broken constantly.

Sure, in-state teams might get funding or other support from their state; but! that doesn't mean that the only way to draw a district boundary is to create one that excludes contact with or sharing costs with other teams and jurisdictions.

There is a huge difference between deciding to support a group of teams and deciding to exclude a group of teams. Folks often make the jump from one decision to the next for absolutely no good reason.

Blake

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by gblake

Remember, it isn't the notion of a "District model" that is the root of this situation. The root cause is that so many folks have a knee jerk tendency toward drawing district boundaries along state borders.

Force them to realize that being in one state or another (or one county/city or another) has nothing to do with being on a robotics team, and tell them to tell local and state officials that you think both they and the robotic programs simply don't need or want to create artificial boundaries at state borders.

When the old canard about state/local funds only being used to pay for folks inside of a boundary gets raised, simply tell them to go right ahead and do it; but to not confuse that support with saying that tournaments or other activities can only include those supported teams. They will find a compromise fast enough if folks like yourself stick to your guns. "Rules" like those get broken constantly.

Sure, in-state teams might get funding or other support from their state; but! that doesn't mean that the only way to draw a district boundary is to create one that excludes contact with or sharing costs with other teams and jurisdictions.

There is a huge difference between deciding to support a group of teams and deciding to exclude a group of teams. Folks often make the jump from one decision to the next for absolutely no good reason.

Blake

who said we even need borders?

I have an idea:

districts and world championship. thats all.

It would work where you would have district competitions all over the areas where FRC can be found.

Any team can go to any district they want. if they like being local, great. if they want to travel, fine.

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

Essentially like 2008 only with smaller and more numerous competitions

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

who said we even need borders?

I have an idea:

districts and world championship. thats all.

It would work where you would have district competitions all over the areas where FRC can be found.

Any team can go to any district they want. if they like being local, great. if they want to travel, fine.

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

Essentially like 2008 only with smaller and more numerous competitions

Unless I missed something you just described regionals. Maybe smaller cheaper regionals, but nothing that could be reasonably described as districts.

[pafwl]

I am very impressed with the responses. You all get it. Now a few points...

Q: Why have a geographic "district" in the first place?
A: Management. FIRSTs computer system cannot take many combinations so they want to keep all the district rules the same across the country. I suggest we have a lot of smart folks that can solve that problem.

Q: Why can't everyone who wins a "district" event go to Nationals.
(assuming they can afford this)
A: That would create too many slots. Very soon Nationals will only be avavilable only to teams that score high with awards or win a regional. Read Bills Blog he is already hinting to this. We in Mid Atlantic Robotics may end up with only 1 Regtional. If that happens then the number of teams from our area going to nationals is cut from 12 to 6.

Q: What about a point system. Get rid of the Regionals and only hold districts. Highest points (awards + scores) go to Nationals.
A1: Problem1: You might win a district but not get to qualify for nationals.
A2: Problem2: FIRST wants that money from the second regional. FIRST only puts up money for a regional if it will be short. Donations make up the rest. So they do not want to get rid of teams going to second regional. That is gravy for them.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Any trophy award gets a team the world championship. championship fields would be drawn from the list of those who got in and have paid their fees.

If I'm interpreting that correctly...
Any trophy award? From Chairman's to Coopertition? I usually try to not immediately shut down an idea in a thread of serious discussion, but that one simply doesn't work logistically. That would be 25 teams per event at max, assuming that no team gets two trophies (e.g. no team were to win a judged award and be a finalist/winner, and the highest rookie seed was not a finalist/winner and did not win a judged award). There are currently 49 regionals (which includes MSC), 58 if all of the MI districts were to count in addition to MSC. Multiplied by the 25 awards, that would be a possible championship of 1225 or 1450 teams, respectively*.

Now, if it were to be specific trophy awards, and the championship was enlarged, it might work. However, you open up a giant can of worms when deciding which awards make the cut. Just engineering awards? Just non-engineering ones? Mix of engineering and non-engineering? Which ones do you choose? (and that's not a rhetorical question)


*if any of those numbers are wrong, please correct me. I scrolled down pages and counted, so they may be off by a bit.

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by Karibou

that would be a possible championship of 1225 or 1450 teams, respectively*.

At that point there would need to be overlap 1450 is greater than the number of teams currently in FRC

[mesamb1]

Originally Posted by lemiant

At that point there would need to be overlap 1450 is greater than the number of teams currently in FRC

2011 FRC at a Glance has the number of teams at 2075 teams.
http://usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Rob..._AtAGlance.pdf

[DSM33]

personally i love the district system. although that's all I've known while on an FRC team, i think it aids FIRST's goal to make FRC a full-blown high school sport and get an FRC team in every high school. it allows the game to be played in a high school gym which is a huge help to spreading FIRST. it makes FRC more available to high schools in general.
i think a big point being missed here is that the districts don't need to be drawn at state lines. Michigan worked out that way because of the high concentration of teams in the state and the system could be modified to accompany multiple states or just certain regions for convenience

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by lemiant

At that point there would need to be overlap 1450 is greater than the number of teams currently in FRC

Well, of course there would be overlap anyways, what with teams such as 1114, 2056, 359, & co. consistently performing top-notch And, as usual, there will be teams who decide not to attend due to financial or travel reasons. The numbers that I gave were purely theoretical and should not be considered realistic

[GaryVoshol]

Kara's numbers do raise a point. The Championships have been running out of room. If new events are added as regionals with guaranteed entry slots, we will someday have too many winners from regionals to invite to Championships, and that day may not be far off. If we ever near the goal of having FRC available in every high school in the country, there will be no way that every regional can advance 6 teams to the Championships. There will need to be a dual-tier championship qualifying scheme. Perhaps this is what Bill's Blog is contemplating, not for 2012 necessarily, but sometime in our near future. FRC will look more like FLL, where most teams can only aspire to qualifying for the first level of championships, equivalent to the MSC.

The biggest hassle in all of this is making travel plans. If you don't know you're going to the Championship until 2 weeks before it happens, you certainly can't get good fares.

[Katie_UPS]

Are there any hidden down-sides to districts? Is it awful to have to win a regional twice to go to champs? How exactly are robots picked for champs? (I understand 3 state champs, 3 chairman's, 3 EI's, and 3 RAS... but aren't they supposed to send 18 teams because they replaced 3 regionals? Who are the other six then? How are they picked?)

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

Are there any hidden down-sides to districts? Is it awful to have to win a regional twice to go to champs? How exactly are robots picked for champs? (I understand 3 state champs, 3 chairman's, 3 EI's, and 3 RAS... but aren't they supposed to send 18 teams because they replaced 3 regionals? Who are the other six then? How are they picked?)

First, it's not 3 IE's and 3 RAS's - it's 2 of 1 and 1 of the other, and I forget which is which right now.

That leaves 9 teams that still go. They are based on the point totals earned during the season - the 2 districts weighted 1/3, and the MSC rated 2/3.

What this does is give deserving teams - for example, a team that was a Finalist in MSC - a chance to qualify for the Championship.