Inter-District Registration & Indiana Events

[Andy Baker]

Attention teams within Districts!

Inter-District Registration opens on Friday, January 9th. (Hey, that's today!)

This means teams in Districts are eligible to apply for any open slots in other District events, as per the blog post by Frank in September.

Indiana is looking forward to the implementation of inter-district play and we would like to invite teams from outside of our region to come play at our Indianapolis (Week 1 - Friday, Feb 27th - Sunday, March 1st) or Kokomo (Week 3 - Thursday, March 12th - Saturday, March 14th) district events.

The benefits of inter-district play include receiving six additional hours of un-bag time prior to the event, having 12+ additional matches, and more judge interaction.

Our Week 1 Indianapolis event is over the weekend, limiting the time missed from school. The Week 3 Kokomo event is an hour and 45 minutes from the Michigan border and IndianaFIRST has been working with local hotels for group discounts. AndyMark is also willing to offer tours of our facility for interested teams.

If you want to learn more about the Indiana District events you can reach out to info@indianafirst.org.

I hope to see some teams from the other districts at our events. It's especially easy for some Michigan teams to scoot on down to Kokomo or Indy for these events.

Sincerely,
Andy Baker
President, AndyMark, Inc.

[Renee Becker-Blau]

As a note each of the Indiana events have capacity for 40 teams, that means we have the following spots available:

Originally Posted by Renee Becker-Blau

IN District -Indianapolis (Week 1) - 5 spots
IN District - Kokomo City of Firsts Event sponsored by AndyMark (Week 3) - 10 spots
IN District - Purdue District (week 4) - 1 spot

Let us know if you have any questions!

[goofy173]

We have some confusion at our team. We are entered in the Kokomo and Purdue District events and the calendar shows the events are held starting on Thursday at 8 a.m. each week. However some of the mentors believe competition only happens on Friday and Saturday so they are planning on only 1 day in a hotel.

Can you straighten this out for us? The dates in question are:

Kokomo Mar. 12-14
Purdue Mar. 19-21

[Renee Becker-Blau]

Originally Posted by goofy173

Can you straighten this out for us? The dates in question are:

Kokomo Mar. 12-14
Purdue Mar. 19-21

The FIRST Event page explains that:

Note on Event Dates: This year, we have started to list the full range of event dates for which there is scheduled team activity. As an example, for Regionals, we will show the date on which teams may choose to load-in as the first date of the event. Load-in typically takes place in the evenings (though not always), and teams are only present for a short time if they take advantage of this option, but it is an officially scheduled team activity. Please check the specific agendas for your event, once posted, to see all the details.

The IndianaFIRST site reflects that there is a load-in period in the evening, on Thursday for each of the events. I will gather the specific times each of the events expects to have the pits open prior to the two full days of competition and update the website accordingly.

[Botsup]

Does anyone know of ANY team signing up for inter-district play in any of the districts? I really thought that at least a few teams would want to try that option.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Botsup

Does anyone know of ANY team signing up for inter-district play in any of the districts? I really thought that at least a few teams would want to try that option.

Team 11, from MAR, is playing in the Pine Tree District, in New England.

[PVCpirate]

316 the LuNaTeCs from New Jersey are signed up for the NE event in Springfield Massachusetts and 3314 the Mechanical Mustangs are signed up for the one in Waterbury Connecticut. I checked everything except the PNW districts.

[Botsup]

That's interesting that only MAR teams are taking up this opportunity. I wonder why? I thought for sure some Michigan teams would want to come out east and show em how it's done.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Botsup

That's interesting that only MAR teams are taking up this opportunity. I wonder why? I thought for sure some Michigan teams would want to come out east and show em how it's done.

That doesn't really surprise me; thirteen MAR teams (out of 121) are competing outside of MAR this year. Ten of them at a regional, one at a NE district, and two at both (Actually, 11 would be signed up for two regionals if it wasn't for when their school scheduled state testing. They were originally signed up for both Hawaii and South Florida, but then dropped South Florida).

And keep in mind, these teams are all travelling pretty far. Five are going to Florida, two to Canada, one to Nevada, one to Texas and another to Hawaii. The closest regionals that MAR teams are going to are Tech Valley (303) and Queen City (4575).

Meanwhile, there's a regional right across the river from Detroit that still has open spots with only three Michigan schools attending (okay, so one school is sending three teams. Still, my point is that a regional that close to MAR would be full instantly). Teams in MAR just don't want to stay in district. We always have teams who opt not to attend MAR champs because they already qualified for St. Louis. No other region is like that. Frankly, I don't get it. When I was a student I was always looking forward to MAR champs.

Teams seem pretty happy with the district system. They already get two plays for the same cost as one, and another play is pretty cheap. Why would they pay the travel expenses to go far away? I don't think the question here should be "why aren't other teams going inter-district?" but rather "why are MAR teams paying so much money to play outside of MAR?"

[PVCpirate]

Michigan teams seem to have really embraced the district concept, the state championship really means something to them. Somehow, 4 years into the MAR district, I guess that hasn't happened. NE and PNW seem to be somewhere in between. Does MAR have a lack of extra spots for extra district plays?

[AGPapa]

The North Brunswick district still has one spot left, but it's week six and right before Easter so I can see why some teams wouldn't want to go there (only one of the regionals that MAR teams are attending is week 6). Twelve teams are currently signed up for a third district event in MAR.

I have data for what events each MAR team has gone to over the past three years.
2015
2014
2013

Here's the number of teams attending a regional/outside district for the past three years:
2015: 13 teams (two teams doing two outside events)
2014: 12 teams
2013: 12 teams (one team also did an extra district)

And the number of teams doing three districts:
2015: 12 teams
2014: 10 teams
2013: 3 teams (one team also did a regional)

Unfortunately I don't have similar data for the 2012 season (it's quite a pain to collect this info manually, so usually I'll just put a thread up and have other people post when somebody is going to a regional).

Anyway, it seems like the number of teams doing three districts has gone up while the number of teams going to a regional is pretty constant. (Overall MAR growth is pretty flat too. It went from 110 in 2013 to 121 in 2015).
I'm pretty sure that there were still open spots for third district events in 2013, as the Lenape district only held 32 teams that year but had 39 the next.

Also, here's the number of teams who declined their MAR champ bids:
2014: 5 teams (3 had already qualified for St. Louis, the highest rank decline was 2607 in 17th).
2013: 16 teams (4 had already qualified for St. Louis, the highest rank decline was 341 in 1st).
2012: 11 teams (3 had already qualified for St. Louis, the highest rank decline was 103 in 11th).

Looking at it now, it seems like a lot of those declines weren't from already being qualified. Rather they were probably from money issues. MAR had ~100k in grants they gave out last year for teams to go to MAR champs, but last I've heard that budget is getting reduced this year so we may see more declines again.

[mdituri]

FYI - 3314 is attending the Alamo Regional in San Antonio, TX week 3 as well.

[Mr V]

190 from the NE district has signed up for the Philomath OR PNW event, which looks like the only interdistrict play we will see.

[Basel A]

Four Michigan teams have signed up for Indiana districts: 68 and 107 at Kokomo, 503 and 2474 at Indianapolis. Of those, only 1 registered for the Michigan 3rd district lottery (503, they got unlucky).

[TJP123]

Looking forward to it.

It would be nice to compete in match #1 so we can compete in the first inter-district match.