KC Regional Considering District Model

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

Attended an interesting meeting put on by KC FIRST where area representatives (students and coaches) were asked to think about how a single regional with a dense local population, (but isolated by substantial distance from other regional events) could transition to a district system. The meeting emphasized that no decisions had been made yet and the committee was highly interested in collecting the opinions of local FRC teams.

Below is the proposal we were asked to consider (as best as I can remember)to help facilitate our discussion.

In place of the Greater Kansas City Regional in expensive Hale arena

• Hold the event over 2 Thursday, Friday, Saturday weekends (not necessarily consecutive) in KC area high school gymnasiums. (No specific locations were discussed.)
• Both weekends would start Thursday afterschool and allow a 6 hour “fix-it” window before each weekend where teams could unbag the robot as compensation for the late start on Thursdays.
• First weekend would be all qualification matches and end with an award ceremony Saturday evening with the awards a traditional regional would give away on Friday.
• Second weekend would continue with qualification matches and end with a standard 8 alliance elimination bracket.
• Qualifications for champs would be the traditional Regional Winners, RCA, EI, & RAS. (There was no discussion on if wildcards would be applicable.)
• Entrance fee still $5,000.

That's an interesting idea. How many robots are in the KC area?

In the Michigan District system we get a bag window before the event. It's much more beneficial to have your bag window with your robot at your facility, with your full set of tools and resources.

In addition, with an event that big you are going to have a horrid amount of time between matches. In the Michigan system it's unusual to have more than 1 hour between matches, and many times it's a 30-45 minute turn around. Going to worlds and having huge downtime between matches stinks, quite frankly.

In addition, that means a full field teardown in the middle of your event.

Would it be possible to do it at two venues, have individual competitions, and simply go on a point basis of who qualifies for worlds? Especially for the mentors, taking off multiple vacation days for the same event would really stink.