Iowa Rankings

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

Actually, Iowa's growth has been in FTC. We went from 65 to 134 teams in one year.

If we could get into a district system (maybe with Minnesota or Kansas / Missouri), we'd probably see some of the FTC teams add or switch to FRC.

This is a pretty significant factor that could help Iowa expand rapidly if FRC's costs came down. There are a total of 19 FTC events in Iowa (9 scrimmages, 9/11 qualifying events depending on how you count double events, and a state championship). Only California, Texas, Florida, and New Jersey have more FTC events (using FIRST's current information). All of those states have significantly higher populations and Florida and New Jersey are piloting the "Meet" model for FTC which increases the event number due to smaller event sizes.

Districts would be nice to have to help justify the competition on a cost basis. I worked the pits at the FTC state championship in 2012 and had a chance to chat with one of the sponsors there. Naturally I asked some about FRC since that is my background and they indicated that they looked at it but weren't interested in sponsoring FRC teams because of the significantly higher costs. Given an Iowa FRC team's steep travel costs at present you can sponsor 10 FTC teams that attend multiple events for the same cost as 1 FRC team attending 1 regional. FRC does a slightly better job of inspiring students than FTC according to FIRST's data but not enough of a difference to justify reaching way less students.

Once the costs come down I think the limiting factor will be finding mentors, but even 20% of Iowa FTC teams participating in FRC would be significant.