[FTC]: FTC Super-Regionals

[orangemoore]

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I am not excited about this because it is going to make it so much harder for my team to have an opportunity to compete that the world championship. Instead of taking 2 two events to get to the world championship it is going to take 3. My team is in Illinois and our competition is November and December so our robot building time frame is severely shortened.

It becomes harder to make the world championships every year, on the basis of more teams entering FTC and teams getting better. This will give more teams the opportunity to play elite-level events, and do a better job at selecting those to advance further to the world championship.

[JohnFogarty]

Let me explain some of the reasons for this change that I know of because I've been talking with some staff at FIRST about creating a system like this for well over a year.

1. The Ability for deserving teams to compete more at a higher level.
We all know there are FTC teams that travel out of state and beyond their own state championship to gain experience and to try for last chance tickets at the world championship. However, it has been the experience of the teams within those states that out of state teams usually that have competed 2-3 times before come in and "clean the floor" with the in state teams, leaving them with no ability to compete at a higher level. Thus the super regional is brought into the picture. This allows/closes states in order to helm them advance their own teams to the regional event and finally allows events to advance whole alliances instead of just alliance captains. Then the super-regional is an event that will have a similar level of competition to World.

2. World Championship will consist of the best teams from around the world.

I know that Global Force is excited about this change since out of our 4 State Championship titles we only we able to attend world twice.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Via FTC Facebook page today

Event details for two Super-Regional Championship Tournaments are now available!
South: San Antonio, TX; Feb. 26-28, 2014
North: Iowa City, IA; April 3-5, 2014
Learn more at http://ow.ly/mLLH2

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by John_1102

1. The Ability for deserving teams to compete more at a higher level.
We all know there are FTC teams that travel out of state and beyond their own state championship to gain experience and to try for last chance tickets at the world championship. However, it has been the experience of the teams within those states that out of state teams usually that have competed 2-3 times before come in and "clean the floor" with the in state teams, leaving them with no ability to compete at a higher level. Thus the super regional is brought into the picture. This allows/closes states in order to helm them advance their own teams to the regional event and finally allows events to advance whole alliances instead of just alliance captains. Then the super-regional is an event that will have a similar level of competition to World.

(emphasis mine)

So this system will lock in states so out-of-state teams can't compete at other state's regionals? I would love that. Currently, Wisconsin doesn't have enough teams to require qualifying events, so out-of-state teams see the WI regional as an easy target, because they don't have to qualify for it. And as a result, Wisconsin teams didn't get to advance.