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Unread 30-03-2015, 06:08
MooreteP's Avatar
MooreteP MooreteP is offline
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Re: 2015 Peachtree Regional

Quote:
Originally Posted by rspurlin View Post
Let me start by agreeing with the previous comments on the negatives.

I was not happy to arrive on Wednesday for field setup and find the seating so far from the field and so little rake. As a planning committee we have input on layout and other issues, but not final control. Sometimes there are also issues such as power, floor access points, hanging or rigging points or other considerations that have to be taken into account as well. Unfortunately if the bleachers can't be set up right the first time, there's no way to rearrange them at the last minute. We will try to do better in future years.

As for giving every team 9 or more matches, that would be wonderful. We'd just need to make it a four day event and find lots of new volunteers (I took 2.5 days of my vacation time to help run this event, so while I'll gladly give you another day of my vacation,I'm not sure all volunteers can do that). The math breaks down this way: With 66 teams you need to run 11 matches (66/6) for each team to play one. Multiply that by 8 or 9 to yield 88 or 99 qualification matches. Cycle time is the time between the start of one match to the next and has to include the match itself, finalizing the scoring, getting the robots off the field, then getting new robots on the field and getting them linked up and ready to play. With this year's game, it's pretty hard to do that in 6 minutes and probably impossible to sustain that match after match. So if you assume a 7 minute cycle, 88 matches requires 616 minutes and 99 matches requires 693. With 11 hours (660 minutes) allocated in a FIRST three day event to qualifications, you can see why you had 8 matches. one other consideration is that you know there will be a team or teams that has trouble linking with the field; for every minute you hold the match waiting for linkup, you have to run that number of matches one minute faster than your target cycle time to catch up. Or to put it another way, we can stay on schedule by bypassing you if you're not ready at the 7 minute mark, or we can give you every effort we can for you to run your robot and be late. We chose the latter over the former and I'd really like to know if you think we made the wrong choice.

Now let's run the same math for the Georgia Southern Classic regional in Perry: 42 teams means you need 7 matches for every team to play one. Knowing it was a week one regional with a new control system, we targeted 8 minute cycles and still had time enough to give every team 11 matches (77 total requiring 616 minutes). We were never more than 10 minutes behind schedule and finished each segment within 2 minutes of target.

I like everything to run on schedule too, but when it isn't happening, we need to remember we are still in this together.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anupam Goli View Post
Ray,

I agree with you on all fronts. The staff and volunteers did their best to get back on schedule after all of the delays, and I wholeheartedly appreciate their efforts to do so. Looking at the cost of fielding a robot though, I'm not sure if I agree that running 8 matches per team is the way we should proceed. I know the vision of GA FIRST is to get as many teams into FRC as possible, but we may need to step back and think about the experience.

If we count our team's sponsorship pledge that covers our registration, we still pay $4000 for a 2nd regional entrance, $3500 for a robot, $3500 for a practice robot in our case, U-haul rental service, and transport to the event. We're sinking in $11,000 + for the regional season. We played 11 + 8 = 19 quals matches in our 2 regionals. That comes out to about $578 per match for us. If we only did one event (Peachtree), we'd be paying $8000+ for 8 quals matches, $1000 per match. Many other teams don't put in the money we do into the program, and others don't have the sponsors we do. If we assume $5000 + $4000 for the registration and robot cost, teams are paying $1,111 per match. I think sinking that type of money and only fielding your robot 8 times isn't worth it.

I think we need to re-evaluate the experience we give teams, and maybe go away from 60+teams at an event. Even if we go down to 60 teams, we can run the same number of qualification matches, giving 48 teams an additional qualification match. If we go down to 58 teams at the event, every team is guaranteed 9 matches in quals, running on the same schedule we had this year. I don't know how we can make this happen, but maybe restricting the initial capacity to 54 during registration gives room for 4 rookies/exceptions to be added in at the last minute.

Mulling things in my head, it may finally be time for our state to go to districts.
Go to Districts.
For the same cost, we had two competitions with 12 matches each.
They were held in high school gymnasiums with 33 teams at Waterbury and 40 teams in Hartford.
While the field is not as deep as a 60 team regional, there is more intimacy with fewer teams and scouting is a little easier.

The downsides are that qualifying for the CMP comes later in your season, so travel plans may be more difficult. For most teams, this is not an issue. And a 75 team "Regional" x 8 at the CMP with the "rake" of the seats in a Dome......

I was wary about moving to the District model, but after two seasons I am sold.

Edit: For most of the competitions we load in on Friday evening and have Practice Matches. Then the competition happens on a Saturday and Sunday. I don't need to take any time off of work and the students don't miss any school.

Last edited by MooreteP : 30-03-2015 at 06:15. Reason: The timeline of a District competition.
 


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