2013 MAR Standings

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by ENeyman

I agree, does anyone know more about the decision to switch venues?

My memory is a little foggy, but I think it was discussed at the MAR board meeting last June. I seem to remember that Lehigh was the only viable venue available week 6/7. I think Temple was booked those weekends. No idea about cost difference between those different sites. I think the Sun Center (Trenton) was getting very expensive.

The Philly/Trenton area is probably the geographic center of MAR. Philly was a bus ride for us last year, but ~2-2.5 hours to Lehigh means it's an overnight trip now, and I'm sure other teams are in the same boat.

I understand that FIRST wants the prestige of a big event, but $4K + lodging is a good chunk of change, especially when you're looking at World Championships 2 weeks later.

We really just aren't big enough to be justifying a 50-60 team regional championship. Michigan has 206 teams and 64 attend MSC. We're at 109 teams this year, and this was an unusually big year for growth. I didn't run numbers for PA, but NJ has had minimal growth up until this year. NJ had 56 teams in 2006 and was at 62 teams in 2012 (peaked at 64 in 2010).

If you look at it, there really isn't much difference in size between a large district event and MAR CMP. We scraped together 53 teams last year, Bridgewater is hosting 43 teams for their district event.