Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It all depends on the team and their situation.

If you're talking about extending the day to add more plays, that could cause serious issues for teams - I've had teams that had to leave by a certain time due to school rules before, and extending the day would be bad for them.

If you're talking about ensuring fewer teams at events so each team gets more plays, then teams that have serious issues and need time to fix them would have a bad experience having to miss matches or sit on the field not moving because they couldn't get everything changed in time.

If you're talking about limiting the team numbers to ensure more plays, then you're actively reducing the number of teams that can play in a region. MN right now has spots for 246 teams to get plays. If we reduce each of our events to 40 teams, then we'll only have room for 160 teams to get plays. That means more teams would have to spend money traveling. Adding events is rather difficult, as it would mean more money - the current events would still cost about the same, and we'd need to add 2 more to keep the same number of plays in the state. That's an increase of 50% in donations to support our events for the same number of plays, something that simply can't happen.

So, is it bad for teams? You tell me. It might be good, it might be bad. It might be dependent on the year and the team in question. The only team I can answer that question for is my own, and I wouldn't want to answer it without getting direct feedback from my students.

Ok, I'll rephrase - Would you prefer to give teams more plays because you believe it would benefit them in achieving FIRST's stated mission of Inspiration?

I'm trying to find some common ground here, this isn't a trick. I'm simply asking you, mentor to mentor, would you prefer for your team to get 9 plays or 8? Which is better for inspiring your students?

Edit - and I seriously don't have an agenda here. If you say you'd rather have 8 plays, fine. We can agree to disagree and I'm fine with your opinion.