Registration 2015

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by EricH

I would hazard a guess that it's due to the proximity of outside regionals to MAR and MAR teams vs. everywhere else.

MAR: You only have NYC, Long Island, Tech Valley (north part of the area), Pittsburgh, DC, Virginia, and Chesapeake within a nice easy drive.

tl;dr: MAR just has more regionals handy.

(Antonio stole my point in the previous post). Most would make the same assumption you did Eric, but after looking at the data, you see that the case is not so. Yes, there might be a larger number of regionals around MAR, but all of the MAR teams currently registered for outside regionals are traveling to much further competitions than the ones that you mentioned. The closest regional that a MAR team is going to is Canada (2 teams), followed by Nevada (1 team) and then Florida (5 teams). None of those are 'handy'.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by EricH

MI: Sure, you've got MN (Duluth x 2), Toronto (x 2), North Bay, Milwaukee, Midwest, and Queen City within a "reasonable" drive, depending where you are in the state. But those are all a bit of a drive, particularly westbound (MN, WI, Midwest), or across the border (the three Canadian events). Indiana has district events, if you can get in.

You missed Windsor, which has more teams from Michigan within an hour drive than from Ontario.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by EricH

Hey, Mark: Is anybody taking the plunge for the title of "First Cross-District Play" yet?

That can't happen before Dec 11 at the earliest.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by EricH

IN: Could probably make Midwest or Queen City in about a day, not so sure about anything beyond that.

Both Queen City and Midwest are week 6 events, which is the same week as the IN State Championship. 234 is going to Buckeye, which is a week 5 event (no Indiana events that week)
Central Illinois is the only other "close" regional, and that's week 4, during our Purdue district event.

[Mark McLeod]

Inland Empire just admitted a slew (12) of teams today.
Scattered additions (and some subtractions) elsewhere brought the total of teams on event lists up by 30.

[sanddrag]

San Diego added 3.

[Allison K]

Michigan now has details on the 18th district event. Week 1 in Standish. Been stable at 351 teams for a few weeks, so it seems as if FiM is done with adding events for the 2015 season now.

[JB987]

LVR opened up 6 more spots this morning...first come first serve!

[JohnSchneider]

Does anyone with inside information know when Arizona is going to pull teams from wait? For AZ West, they show 29 registered teams with 0 open.... but I can't believe that that's the final count.

[Nathan Rossi]

Originally Posted by JohnSchneider

Does anyone with inside information know when Arizona is going to pull teams from wait? For AZ West, they show 29 registered teams with 0 open.... but I can't believe that that's the final count.

1492 just got off the wait-list for Arizona West today (or yesterday, I didn't check). Like you said, 29 teams is unlikely to be the final team count. I imagine more teams will get off the wait-list at some point. But, I don't know that for a fact, contact the RD if you want an official response.

[Mark McLeod]

2876 teams currently

• 6.2% growth (1.1% less than last year) = 168 additional teams
• 93% retention (1.5% higher than last year) = 2490 returning teams, 218 teams from last year who haven't reregistered
• 12.5% new teams (2.2% fewer new teams than last year) = 360 new teams
• 10.4% resurrected vets (6.4% fewer than last year) = 26 vets who didn't play last year

[PayneTrain]

Mark, have you put together any kind of graph that shows growth and retention rates over the last 5-10 years? Wonder if we'll look back on registration this year as an anomaly or as part of a plateau of overall growth and increased retention (ie the "market" of FRC team development has matured under the traditional regional model). Conversely, does the 2014 season look like an anomaly over the last half-decade?

[Mark McLeod]

Here are the team growth and year-to-year retention (corrected for resurrected vets) charts from the beginning.
Retention is the highest that it has ever been.
Really, it's just the new team growth that's down this year. Hard to tell if that's the fault of marketing, outreach or something else.
I wouldn't describe it as a "plateau."

[gsesny]

Question that is a little off topic the current subject about growth. How can F.I.R.S.T. close registration when they have not cleaned up their wait list? We have been on the wait list since the first day of registering for a second event. We have not heard from first about the wait list, where we stand or even if we have a chance to get in. We would like to go to a second event. It will really hurt our young program not to. We could register at a 3rd event that has a shorter wait list but will that hurt our chances at our first choice wait list? After they clean up the wait list can you still call and get registered at an event that is not full?

On a side not I have talked to a few teams in our area and it seems that many of them are having a harder time registering for a second event. Is anyone else seeing this?

Any advice on this?

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by gsesny

Question that is a little off topic the current subject about growth. How can F.I.R.S.T. close registration when they have not cleaned up their wait list? We have been on the wait list since the first day of registering for a second event. We have not heard from first about the wait list, where we stand or even if we have a chance to get in. We would like to go to a second event. It will really hurt our young program not to. We could register at a 3rd event that has a shorter wait list but will that hurt our chances at our first choice wait list? After they clean up the wait list can you still call and get registered at an event that is not full?

On a side not I have talked to a few teams in our area and it seems that many of them are having a harder time registering for a second event. Is anyone else seeing this?

Any advice on this?

[Shameless plug] The Hub City regional still has plenty of spots open that you could guarantee your team! [/Shameless Plug]