New England District Events 2016

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss

True statement..here is the email that teams just received. Main and alternate contacts--this is in your Inbox.


Good Afternoon Teams,

Please note the following change to the 2016 UMass Dartmouth District Event date:

Friday, March 18 - Sunday, March 20

The event will still be held at the Tripp Athletic Center in North Dartmouth, MA.

Ouch. This is very difficult news for us on 1519. As mentioned earlier in this thread, our team hasn't competed in any Sunday events due to religious beliefs of many of our members. Our team doesn't meet on Sundays during the build season for this reason.

Ever since the switch to districts, we've definitely been disappointed that all the CT events have been Sat/Sun events so we haven't been able to play at district events with our friends in CT, and we have been disappointed that WPI's BattleCry has switched to a Sat/Sun format. However, this year's district event schedule is even more disappointing/frustrating for us.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, there were only 4 NE district events (on three weekends) that had an option other than a Sat/Sun tournament. We had been planning to register for the one Week 3 Fri/Sat event (UMass Dartmouth) and the one Week 6 Fri/Sat event (Pine Tree), as the Week 4 Fri/Sat events are on the weekend of Easter Sunday. Even though the Week 4 events don't take place on Easter Sunday, there are religious services for some of our members on the Thursday of Easter weekend (Maundy Thursday) and Friday of Easter weekend (Good Friday), so competing that weekend will impede our ability to have all of our team members participate. Thus, even though there are two events that weekend that are Fri/Sat, they really don't help us much.

Now, since the UMass Dartmouth Week 3 event has switched to Sat/Sun, we're instead left with only one weekend with an event which doesn't pose a conflict with the religious beliefs of some of our members, and that's Week 6. If we still want to compete in FIRST, we'll have to go with a subset of our team to a Week 4 event.

I really don't see any other options for us. Inter-district play doesn't really help us yet, since you can't get points out of district (although we'd love to be able to go to an FiM event and have it count for points -- all the Michigan events are Fri/Sat!) I wonder if FIRST and NEFIRST would allow us to opt out of the district entirely and attend only regional events instead? There's enough regional events within driving distance that it would be a possibility: NY Tech Valley in Week 3, Finger Lakes in Week 4, Long Island in Week 5.

We can't even ask to be in the MAR district, as they have switched ALL of their events over to the Sat/Sun format...

I must admit I really didn't anticipate that the switch to districts would be a switch to Sat/Sun events from the traditional Thurs/Fri/Sat regional event format.