Frank Answers Fridays: Expanded Championship Qualification

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Why will they be Thur - Sat? My point was that, by removing practice days, events can be weekend only affairs. And once you're at the DCMP or higher level practice days seem less valuable as you should already have your bot working.

Then why hasn't this happened already? Why are most regional events and District Championships held Thursday-Saturday? The missed school time has been an issue for a while now, why would we think this would change if we add in a Regional Championship?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

Then why hasn't this happened already? Why are most regional events and District Championships held Thursday-Saturday? The missed school time has been an issue for a while now, why would we think this would change if we add in a Regional Championship?

A fair amount of CA regionals are on this Sunday model now (2-3). Which is 1/3-1/2 of our events.

I know some teams aren't stoked about sunday events for travel, so for regionals with a lot of traveling teams it's not desirable.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

Then why hasn't this happened already? Why are most regional events and District Championships held Thursday-Saturday? The missed school time has been an issue for a while now, why would we think this would change if we add in a Regional Championship?

Sunday being sunday is why. People crave that day off.

Also, in regards to districts specifically, the reason for the shift there to Sat-Sun is due to the fact that many are held in high schools; practice day not starting until 4-ish Friday limits conflicts with the Friday schoolday.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

A fair amount of CA regionals are on this Sunday model now (2-3). Which is 1/3-1/2 of our events.

I know some teams aren't stoked about sunday events for travel, so for regionals with a lot of traveling teams it's not desirable.

From looking at last year's calendar I see 5 regionals on the Friday-Sunday schedule.

How have the Friday-Sunday regionals worked out so far? Opinions? I know I'd like this because it means less time I have to take off work each year.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Sunday being sunday is why. People crave that day off.

Also, in regards to districts specifically, the reason for the shift there to Sat-Sun is due to the fact that many are held in high schools; practice day not starting until 4-ish Friday limits conflicts with the Friday schoolday.

I understand this and it reinforces my argument, my point was we shouldn't expect a switch, so the missed school is a very valid argument since it would add at least another 2 days of missed school, probably 3 for teams that have to travel, to teams that qualify.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by RKazmer

It would have to be. If it goes to the model Adam has in the flowchart, there are four levels of competition. There would have to be many more weeks in the schedule for FIRST competitions. Assuming that the teams will go to at least 2 district events, that will be 6 competitions in one season for a team that would make it to champs.

Why would there have to be many more weeks of competition? Districts/regional qualifications wouldn't have to occupy the six week period they currently do. There would only be one additional stage compared to the current district model, so it would be a minimum of five events for a championship competitor, not six (district 1, district 2, district championship, super regional, FRC championship). That could perhaps be condensed further if district championship events are not required to attend the super regional.

Originally Posted by RKazmer

Big problem with this: Each competition will be about half a week for kids that are in school, and the kids would have to take off the equivalent of around 3 weeks of school time that most could not afford to miss. While larger teams can send a contingent to different events, smaller teams or teams that don't train more than one drive team may see a major drop in grades or participation from the events.

1712's students missed a grand total of 3 days of school this past season to compete in two districts and the MAR championship. In 2012, 1712's students missed no school at all. Districts are only 2.5 days, with the load-in/practice day occurring entirely during the evenings. Many run the qualification and elimination matches on Saturday and Sunday. The events are close in enough in MAR that we don't need travel days or hotels. For the "FiES" hypothetical scenario, there's a lot less cost in terms of school missed and travel.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

Then why hasn't this happened already? Why are most regional events and District Championships held Thursday-Saturday? The missed school time has been an issue for a while now, why would we think this would change if we add in a Regional Championship?

DCMP Practice days typically end up with qualification matches being played on them. But that is optional. By increasing the number of event levels you can decrease the size of the events meaning you get more matches without increasing the number of matches played.

Basically, there's a handful of knobs you can work with to get the desired results. Assuming that the way things have been done is the only way to do them is completely invalid. Actually, in order for FRC to scale I don't think our current approach is feasible in the least bit.

Personally, I'd like to see a move to a longer competition season with no bagging.
5 week build season (I've kept it at 5 weeks as that allows for 1 wk proto, 1 wk cad, 1 wk order, 1 wk assemble, 1 wk test)

3 weeks of local meets - events with no judges, smaller AV covering only scores and rankings, and a single elimination bracket. Focus these on getting teams comfortable playing the game and iterating their robot. Almost like preseason events.

Several weeks of district play (districts as we know them) with an attempt to play mostly sat/sun events.

Then we move into Regional (District CMP) level play for a week. But these events are much smaller, still only 40-50 teams.

Qualifying teams go to State/Region Cmp (again, 40-50 teams)

Qualifying go to CMP (8 divisions of 50 teams?)

Smaller events let us keep quality high, use smaller (and cheaper) venues, have shorter events with a reasonable number of matches. No bagging allows teams to iterate and prevent teams from having terrible seasons (and being disillusioned) as a result of poor game eval.

The big issue I have with these is it assumes a relatively uniform distribution of teams which isn't currently the case (nor will it likely EVER be). It also adds about 2 weeks to the competition season (assuming that the district season is still 6 weeks, we could shorten that and make smaller districts to alleviate this issue).

Before anyone says that no bagging will increase mentor burn out. Even with a bag and no practice bot, 125 was still in the shop EVERY night from January until late April. It's your choice to do that, if mentors/students don't want to, don't.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

How have the Friday-Sunday regionals worked out so far? Opinions? I know I'd like this because it means less time I have to take off work each year.

Absolutely terrible. The Monday after at school was my least favourite afternoon (...) of the year.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

How have the Friday-Sunday regionals worked out so far? Opinions? I know I'd like this because it means less time I have to take off work each year.

I love it because it is less time off from school/work, but I do miss the recovery day after when I have these type of events. I still haven't made up my mind though if (Thursday)Friday-Saturday or (Friday) Saturday-Sunday events are better though.

[PayneTrain]

I remember the Monday after the 2010 New Jersey Regional my sophomore year for being... difficult. You either take the day off on Thursday or your body wishes you take the Monday off.

That being said, regionals that attract a very local crowd (>85% of the teams within a 2.5 hour drive) might be better suited with a Friday-Sunday schedule (which I assume is the makeup of the Fri-Sun California regionals).

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

After rereading this entire thread, I still have a couple questions unanswered:

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

In the presentation FIRST was giving to areas about districts, the super regional model is already their plan.

Districts > District Champs > Regional Champs (200-400 teams?) > World Champs

1. Was this presentation ever cited specifically in this thread or only referenced? I HAVE seen a presentation that referenced possible super-regional championships, and I want to make sure that the one I saw is the same one everyone is referencing here.

2. I don't see the purpose of adding another layer of competitions in-between State/Regional CMP and the FRC CMP any time soon. In a universal district system, if the whole idea with proportional representation is to reserve a number of slots proportional to the size of the district, as FRC grows can't we simply adjust the number of slots allotted to each region?
I suppose if FRC ever grew to near capacity this may become a problem then, but we're at least 2 decades away before that could ever become a problem.

I think it's becoming fairly obvious (to myself at least) that regionals are becoming increasingly difficult to fit into the qualification structure we find ourselves in. Honestly ~600 FRC teams competing in one event is going to be a logistical nightmare (or close to one), and then when we hit that max. barrier with regionals, are we going to try to expand again? Universal District Championships are expandable and proportional, and can allow us to cap the World Championship at whatever number we feel like. Why isn't FIRST Headquarters encouraging regions to transition to districts (faster)? Clearly they work.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

After rereading this entire thread, I still have a couple questions unanswered:



1. Was this presentation ever cited specifically in this thread or only referenced? I HAVE seen a presentation that referenced possible super-regional championships, and I want to make sure that the one I saw is the same one everyone is referencing here.

2. I don't see the purpose of adding another layer of competitions in-between State/Regional CMP and the FRC CMP any time soon. In a universal district system, if the whole idea with proportional representation is to reserve a number of slots proportional to the size of the district, as FRC grows can't we simply adjust the number of slots allotted to each region?
I suppose if FRC ever grew to near capacity this may become a problem then, but we're at least 2 decades away before that could ever become a problem.

I think it's becoming fairly obvious (to myself at least) that regionals are becoming increasingly difficult to fit into the qualification structure we find ourselves in. Honestly ~600 FRC teams competing in one event is going to be a logistical nightmare (or close to one), and then when we hit that max. barrier with regionals, are we going to try to expand again? Universal District Championships are expandable and proportional, and can allow us to cap the World Championship at whatever number we feel like. Why isn't FIRST Headquarters encouraging regions to transition to districts (faster)? Clearly they work.

Because some areas are still too spread out. Also switching before a region is prepared to run the extra events can cause a lot of problems.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Why isn't FIRST Headquarters encouraging regions to transition to districts (faster)? Clearly they work.

They are. For areas with many teams/events per area (high-density), districts make sense. There are some areas, though, where districts still don't make sense (to me, at least). New York, is one of those areas -- teams are not uniformly distributed throughout the state, and are more or less are clustered into NYC, Long Island, Rochester, Buffalo, or the Capital Region (Albany/Tech Valley).

It will be interesting to see what they end up doing. One of the thoughts that I've had is to take the Capital Region teams and roll them into NE, and the NYC and Long Island Teams into MAR, which actually makes more geographic sense than the entirety of NY state becoming a district (could you imagine the travel times for Buffalo/Rochester teams to go to a DCMP that could be as far as NYC?).

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

From looking at last year's calendar I see 5 regionals on the Friday-Sunday schedule.

How have the Friday-Sunday regionals worked out so far? Opinions? I know I'd like this because it means less time I have to take off work each year.

Something teams should consider under the regional model is do you have to be there on Thursday? For teams who are traveling a distance to compete the answer is most likely yes. However if it is an event that your team will commute daily to or the drive is around 3-4 hours is completely doable to have a majority of your team in school for part of the day or work a full day before traveling to the event and being there for Friday/Sat of competition. I know this doesn't sound appealing however if your team is trying to do multiple regional plus Championships its something to consider at one of your events to reduce the number of days out of school/work. I know of many mentors/adults who do not come to regionals on the first day because it isn't worth the time out of work (for team leads its impossible).

As the seasons get longer its not easy to adapt and our team felt it this year. In 2013 we went to two regionals plus the Championship which took our team members out of school for two days (Week 1 events fall under winter vacation and the Championship has fallen during spring vacation for New Hampshire schools). Looking at 2014 we were concerned because in order to compete at the Championship it would require 8-9 days out of school! We competed during week 2 this year at a Thurs/Fri event because we wanted to avoid week 1 so that added two days. Our second district was a Fri/Sat and the district Championship was Thurs/Fri/Sat. Championships could either be 3-4 days out of school depending on our travel plans of which we it became 3.5 as we left halfway through the day on Tuesday.

It wasn't an easy season but we set aside time during long meetings for school/homework (about 5 hours a week) plus we decided not to meet on Wednesday or Sunday until weeks 5 & 6 giving everyone a break. This year we will most likely keep the same schedule but cut our meeting times nearly in half by meeting from 6-9 instead of from 2-8/9. Our plan from the start was that if students were struggling to keep up with their classes we would look into having some of the team forgo the first day at the district championship (which is half practice and half competition roughly 2-3 matches) and also examine their eligibility to travel to part or all of a two day district event. Overall the kids kept up with their homework/classes.

Its not easy but it can be done. Work harder not smarter and know where to draw the line.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

(could you imagine the travel times for Buffalo/Rochester teams to go to a DCMP that could be as far as NYC?).

Yes, I can imagine - it's about the same drive for a team to drive from NYC to the Michigan State Championship than it is to drive from Houghton, MI to MSC.