Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?

[Daskov]

it says that FIRST Canada will be restricting the number of rookie teams this year. Rookie teams will now have to fill out an application form to be reviewed and approved if you wish to start a team.
This is due to lack of funding for FIRST Canada- they don't have enough money to support the growth that Canada has.
As Canada is moving to the district system in a few years, this will really limit the number of Canadian teams able to go to World Champs. Needless to say, I am very disappointed with the news.
FIRST World Champs heavily pushed starting new teams, and then they do this. There is already some bias against Canadian teams, as many of us Canadian's have found over the years, so this plus the districts feels like they are really pushing us aside.
I hope that this is not needed in 2016.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Daskov

This is due to lack of funding for FIRST Canada- they don't have enough money to support the growth that Canada has.

Source?

[Daskov]

I'm sorry. I should have said "I believe that..."
That is the only reason I can think of for why you would need to fill out an application grant. I know from my team's dealings with FIRST Canada that they do not like giving out funds, as they don't have very many.

[Thad House]

Isn't it impossible to limit the number of teams? They can limit grant money, but if a team finds a way to fund themselves I'm almost positive there is no rule saying they can deny teams entry. I'm pretty sure they cannot limit who attends the regionals as well, just how many teams total the event can accept. If they actually do try to attempt actually limiting the number of teams I can see that getting politically bad really fast, and we all know we don't want that.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Daskov

it says that FIRST Canada will be restricting the number of rookie teams this year. Rookie teams will now have to fill out an application form to be reviewed and approved if you wish to start a team.
This is due to lack of funding for FIRST Canada- they don't have enough money to support the growth that Canada has.

How is funding helped by limiting the number of teams permitted to register? What am I missing?

[Ernst]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

How is funding helped by limiting the number of teams permitted to register? What am I missing?

My guess is that they can't fund more Regionals to support the team growth.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by ZehP

My guess is that they can't fund more Regionals to support the team growth.

I've always heard it stressed that FIRST doesn't pay the costs to put on a regional competition, and that it's up to the committee running the regional to obtain funding via sponsorships and grants and the like. Does FIRST Canada do things differently?

[mman1506]

Didn't FIRST Canada just receive a pretty large multi year donation from Bruce Power?

[tcjinaz]

Originally Posted by Daskov

it says that FIRST Canada will be restricting the number of rookie teams this year. Rookie teams will now have to fill out an application form to be reviewed and approved if you wish to start a team.
This is due to lack of funding for FIRST Canada- they don't have enough money to support the growth that Canada has.
As Canada is moving to the district system in a few years, this will really limit the number of Canadian teams able to go to World Champs. Needless to say, I am very disappointed with the news.
FIRST World Champs heavily pushed starting new teams, and then they do this. There is already some bias against Canadian teams, as many of us Canadian's have found over the years, so this plus the districts feels like they are really pushing us aside.
I hope that this is not needed in 2016.

They're not pushing you aside, they're growing the sport.

So FIRST headquarters pushes creating/mentoring new teams. Many new teams show up, and this overloads the regional system, which makes the district model necessary. For the number of active teams out there, that's the way things need to go.

No more win one, go to the world championship. FIRST has outgrown the Curie/Archimedes/Newton/Galileo level of playoffs; there need to be another level. Michigan has been living with a high density district system for a while, and it looks like it works. The best Michigan teams get to Einstein with regularity. Canada seems to be fairly dense in S Ontario, districts there are appropriate and necessary.

With districts out here in the wild wild west, I've got a problem raising travel money. In another thread, someone proposed as SW US district, AZ, NM, TX OK. The teams in Yuma would have a 1500 mile trip to district championships in Omaha. That's not going to work. Most of AZ (Yuma to CA), NM, S Nevada, Utah, S CO might work. State borders will need to be ignored.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by tcjinaz

With districts out here in the wild wild west, I've got a problem raising travel money. In another thread, someone proposed as SW US district, AZ, NM, TX OK. The teams in Yuma would have a 1500 mile trip to district championships in Omaha. That's not going to work. Most of AZ (Yuma to CA), NM, S Nevada, Utah, S CO might work. State borders will need to be ignored.

Isn't Omaha in Nebraska? I was just there a couple weekends ago, and while they certainly have a very nice center to host a District Champs, there are no FRC teams in Nebraska. If I remember correctly at one point the VEX US National Championship was held there, but the FIRST family of programs is almost non-existent in Nebraska.

[highlander]

IMHO this is a very poor decision. To me, they are sending an implied message that they are limiting growth and innovation, and not giving all the potential kids a chance to experience FIRST in it's fullest. Not classy at all.

[tcjinaz]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

Isn't Omaha in Nebraska? I was just there a couple weekends ago, and while they certainly have a very nice center to host a District Champs, there are no FRC teams in Nebraska. If I remember correctly at one point the VEX US National Championship was held there, but the FIRST family of programs is almost non-existent in Nebraska.

DOH!

I'm a forgetful old fart (forgive just a little, but fly-over country comes to mind . Should have been to Oklahoma City, just 1200 miles. Still an airline trip instead of a bus, to avoid too many NCLB negative school days (yes, it still lives, despite Common Core.) Still, not like going to San Diego from Yuma; that saves potentially two nights of hotel on a bus death march.

[LeelandS]

I'm curious to see what a member of FIRST Canada who knows intimately of this decision has to say.

One of the main goals of FIRST has always seemed to have been "grow the program." FIRST Canada has undergone an outstanding growth in the past 2-3 season. Since 2012, when the regional in Montreal started up, FIRST Canada has seemed (from my perspective, anyway) to have undergone some of the most successful expansion-of-program I've ever seen in 7/8 years of FIRST.

It seems plausible to me that this is a "too much of a good thing" scenario. FIRST Canada has probably been thrilled with their growth in the past several years; however, it is possible that they're realizing they're stretching their resources thin. As many of you know, one of the Greater Toronto Regionals (I want to say West) was hosted at Crescent School, home of 610. While I'm sure 610 did a great job of hosting the event and that their dedication and contribution was very appreciated, many are also aware that there were severe space limitations. I would venture to say that similar situations are popping up where venue space, volunteer power, and overall funding are being stretched too thin to support the rapidly growing population of teams in FIRST Canada.

Given this, the logical solution, for the time being, seems to be to slow the growth of the population of teams. It would be unfair to tell already established teams that they cannot compete because "there are too many of you." So the only plausible solution is to limit the number of rookies being allowed to join. I don't agree with the solution, nor do I like it, but FIRST Canada is run by some smart people, and I'd venture a guess that they know more about their situation than I do. So if they feel it's necessary, I'm sure it is.

Naturally, that's purely speculation. I am very interested to hear from someone with intimate knowledge of the situation.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Daskov

As Canada is moving to the district system in a few years, this will really limit the number of Canadian teams able to go to World Champs. Needless to say, I am very disappointed with the news.
FIRST World Champs heavily pushed starting new teams, and then they do this. There is already some bias against Canadian teams, as many of us Canadian's have found over the years, so this plus the districts feels like they are really pushing us aside.
I hope that this is not needed in 2016.

I'm a little bit curious about this line of thought. I know historically there has been a large amount of flak directed at Canadian teams travelling to other regionals (like 1114 at Pittsburgh in 2011, ugh), but I'm not sure how FIRST pushing for Canadian/Ontario districts can be taken as "pushing Canadian teams aside." Could you elaborate? My understanding of the District model is that regions are given a number of slots based on the amount of teams they have relative to the total amount of FIRST teams/the amount of teams attending Champs. Isn't the model just bringing the amount of Canadian teams attending Champs into proportion? I remember an analysis last year that Ontario was the most overrepresented region at Champs*. I get that frankly Ontario is one of, if not the most competitive, region in the world, but proportionally it does end up soaking up a lot of spots at Champs. I haven't seen any data from this year though, so I can't comment on whether it was the same in 2014.

*Full disclosure, Minnesota was the most underrepresented if I remember correctly

[XaulZan11]

I don't like to speak for others, but perhaps the "districts pushing Canadian teams aside" is related to that over 25% of Ontario teams qualified for the championship last year*. If/when Canada (or part of Canada) switches to districts, this number is sure to decrease. I could see how a switch to districts could be viewed as pushing Canada aside.

*Source: 1114's April 6th Facebook post.