Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by DareDad

Apart from a pile of disjointed small events in high school gyms and marginally more matches per team, what are "All the advantages" of moving to a district system?

I'm not sure where you get the "disjointed small events" thing from. In the PNW district we are quite proud of the conisistency of our events and our production values. This is something that many other areas have noticed and those who are starting new districts contact us and many specifically request info on our production equipment and methods.

The list of benefits is long and if you search for posts by me or many others who have made the transition you can get a more comprehensive list as I don't have the time right now to give a comprehensive list.

ALL teams have the chance at what I call the true engineering experience of improving their performance after "real world" testing. Currently only teams that can come up with another $4000 and figure out travel expenses in most cases get that opportunity. This to me is the biggest benefit and the District System would be worth it on that alone.

24 guaranteed matches instead of 8 or 9 that many regionals offer is a huge benefit.

Higher likelihood of participating in finals and higher likelihood of winning a judged award.

Better chance of those great but not top teams earning a spot at CMP. Now this is only our 3rd year, but in the second year the non powerhouse teams that attended were generally a different group than had attended the first season we went to the District System.

Student satisfaction in the District System is greatly improved. Our first season I spent a lot of time in the pits talking to students across all levels of teams. NOT A SINGLE student wanted to go back to the Regional System. I did have mentors who were displeased because it meant more time off from work if they were going to support the team at every event for every day. That however has changed as we now have a number of Sat-Sun events which means no missing school for students and for those mentors that have the traditional 9-5/M-F job less time off of work.

I could go on for another page or two but we've still got 4 more hours of our unbag time and I've got to meet the team at the practice field hosted by 2557 SOTAbots so our programmers can work on scoring a boulder in auto instead of just getting a crossing, and to get a little more time behind the glass for our drive team.