Calling all students and mentors from the CHS, NC, and PCH Districts

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I think the model would benefit from requiring that you a) play at least one event in your home system and b) any 2 events in your home system will be your points earning events, regardless of your OOD event.

I don't know what to do. I don't feel like it should be as simple as tearing down the walls and having an open season because it might cause some weird things to happen in the points. For instance, I'm pretty sure 238 would have qualified for NC states with their sole event in Asheville...

Currently the two events in your home district are your points earning events regardless of their chronological order. I do agree that inter-district play with points portability should require the team to play at least one event in the home district and that if they get enough points to attend that district's DCMP then they must attend that event.

The way it is now we already have some teams that pick their events based on the fact that they think a particular event will be easier and allowing inter-district play with points portability could only make that worse.

The way it worked out this and previous seasons, in the PNW a team can earn enough points at one District event to qualify for DCMP. This year the cutoff was 58 pts with the declines and a #1 seed that goes all the way earned 68 pts w/o winning any awards. I do understand that in a larger District like FiM a single win may not earn enough points to move on. You do have to keep in mind that since the points are cumulative a team that earns enough at their first event will still want to attend their second event to better their chances at a CMP spot.

[DubstepLion1]

Since last year was our rookie year, we could only really attend one regional. Luckily though, it took us only 10-15 minutes to get to the competitions since we were based in Raleigh, too.

This year, we attended two district events: Wake County and Campbell University/Johnston Community College. The first event only took us 20-25 minutes to drive to. However for the second event, some members of our team required lodging because it took them 1.5-2 hrs. to drive since they lived up far north in Wake County. As for me and others who lived near our workspace in Southern Wake County, we opted for the 45 min. daily commute.

Our team, too, qualified for DCMP in Charlotte, NC. This was around 2.5 to 3 hours to get to and our entire team required lodging.

Compared to last year, I would say I prefer the District system much better even though I only fully understood it after qualifying for DCMP. Our team was exposed to much more opportunities to fine tune our robot and get to know how to work with other teams. Cheering and lodging together additionally furthered our team's unity especially with 20+ new members this year. We lost in the semifinals at Wake Country and we won at Campbell most only because of the great generosity of Triple Strange (#1533) and The Flying Platypi (#2655) . Our robots for the 2015 & 2016 season performed pretty decently with all-around focus on the gameplay, but our team were very successful on our strategy for getting us through. However, we were all extremely surprised for qualifying World Championships in St. Louis. Like Dezion from T-Rex (#4935) mentioned earlier, we had accumulated enough ranking points especially from DCMP.

I believe the District system is a great way to level out the playing field for all teams; more teams have an opportunity to qualify which greatly increases the competition even for teams that perform well from season to season. This system offers a dynamic experience and I think teams will benefit globally especially considering the current rate of new teams joining FIRST. We hope to have a great time at St. Louis and we appreciate all of the hard work and Gracious Professionalism all teams contributed to this awesome season!

[marshall]

I'm still avoiding voting because I haven't made up my mind. Here are some of my thoughts though:

Things I like:

• More play time.
• Unbag time... Particularly if the rules don't change next year.
• Proximity of the events was nice.

Things I don't like as much:

• No time between matches to fix problems (we will get better at this).
• Lack of understanding of the district points system (this will get better).
• No recovery time on Sundays. The events just left me drained and I will need to plan for this next year (the plus side is missing less work but I found myself taking Mondays to recover?).
• Seeing the same teams win similar awards for events (yes, we were guilty of this too and it is to be expected... it just gets dull).
• Missing our friends from out of state and out of country. We liked playing with teams outside NC. Perhaps we will travel to Indiana next year. I'd like to see other teams allowed into the districts somehow.
• The district events had tiny awards... I know, I'm being petty but it was kinda sad. I get it, I really do, but it was still sad to me. DCMP had the normal size awards. Like I said, I get it... still sad to me.

Things that I really don't like at all:

• The flooring at the NC District events. It was good for standing on but trying to move/roll anything on it was a monumentally painful process.
• Volunteer burnout was obvious. I am hoping to change that with the NC FIRST Alumni group but it is in its infancy. NC needs more volunteers. When we have them, we'll have the luxury of alternating them to help with burnout.
• Districts need to recognize additional Dean's list and WFFA recipients (though maybe as they grow? This might already be a thing and I'm just not aware).

Things that I feel should be fixed:

• NC needs more FRC Teams.
• NC needs more FRC Teams.
• NC needs more FRC Teams.

I'm sure I've got more but that's my list. At first glance it seems more negative than positive but truthfully, we enjoyed the move to districts. It was a great first year for it and I'm hoping for many more awesome years.

[DubstepLion1]

I guess I failed to see some of the cons with the District system, but I'd have to agree with all of the points Marshall listed above. I did have a chance to go to the Palmetto Regionals last year and I marveled at the diversity of teams from Columbus, OH and all over the east coast. After getting to DCMP, I felt like there wasn't much emphasis put on the importance on winning something over winning something at a district event. Nonetheless, I was still surprised by how many rookie teams there were this year and I hope it continues to grow.

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Take a look at my custom user title.

The only thing I disliked was having very little pit time at DCMP before matches started. we had a very rough first day and a half and we're still trying to get all of our robot functional again.

I waited until after DCMP to make a final call on this, but truth be told I had already made up my mind after my first district competitions.

To answer the questions in by the OP, 1648 has attended two events for the past few years (2013-14, Palmetto and Peachtree; 2015, GSC and Peachtree). Peachtree was local, Palmetto was obviously not, and GSC was kinda in the middle.

ALL of our events were not close this year (Columbus, Albany, DCMP), and all required lodging. We did this for the strategic value of it, not because we couldn't pick a local event; we wanted to avoid the KSU/DCMP turnaround of two days, which I think was a good call in hindsight. Travel was 2 hours, 3.5 hours, and 1.5 hours respectively.

But after all of this, I definitely prefer the district system. I come from a team that always did one event in the regional system. So while the change hasn't been that significant for 1648 (though it is universally loved within the team), for me it's been dramatic. The extra plays, the small size of the competition, and the venues all made them feel like well run events. Did I have my gripes? Absolutely. The lack of practice fields at both of our districts was troubling and painfully annoying. The lack of metro-Atlanta events was disappointing. However, I think that as the state grows, having more events around the state will only make things better. I'm willing to chalk up the rest of the problems I saw to the first year of the system, and the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.

In terms of what I would like to see next year, the three priorities for me are:
1. Reorganize the event schedule so there aren't poorly timed, unavoidable back-to-back events.
2. Find a practice field for an event. This needs to be a priority over a lot of other things.
3. Figure out the Dean's List/Woodie Flowers situation. It was frustrating and odd to see them mention some things at a few events and ignore them at others. For example, Albany didn't mention anything about Woodie Flowers, but Dean's List Semifinalists were announced. The reverse was true at KSU, IIRC.

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

I have emailed Frank and asked about official inter-district play being opened between the districts. With MAR, CHS, and NC all right next to each other this seems like the prime location to pilot this. Teams could compete at any district events they want but earn points towards their own DCMP. This would help alleviate seeing the same teams over and over again. It would also allow teams on the edges of their districts(like 1629) to travel to events that are in other districts but may be closer than any of their own districts events.

Franks response said that this has been brought up to the district leaders and was voted down. If this is something that you may be interested in doing please talk to your own districts and try to convince them that this is something the teams in your district could benefit from. I will be talking to Stan about it in detail. Frank said the topic would be brought up again to be discussed.

I'd love to see PCH do this as well, at least with NC....obviously it isn't as easy since we aren't nearly as close, but I still think piloting it in NC would be an ideal option, I think.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by marshall

I'm still avoiding voting because I haven't made up my mind. Here are some of my thoughts though:

Things I like:

• More play time.
• Unbag time... Particularly if the rules don't change next year.
• Proximity of the events was nice.

Things I don't like as much:

• No time between matches to fix problems (we will get better at this).
• Lack of understanding of the district points system (this will get better).
• No recovery time on Sundays. The events just left me drained and I will need to plan for this next year (the plus side is missing less work but I found myself taking Mondays to recover?).
• Seeing the same teams win similar awards for events (yes, we were guilty of this too and it is to be expected... it just gets dull).
• Missing our friends from out of state and out of country. We liked playing with teams outside NC. Perhaps we will travel to Indiana next year. I'd like to see other teams allowed into the districts somehow.
• The district events had tiny awards... I know, I'm being petty but it was kinda sad. I get it, I really do, but it was still sad to me. DCMP had the normal size awards. Like I said, I get it... still sad to me.

Things that I really don't like at all:

• The flooring at the NC District events. It was good for standing on but trying to move/roll anything on it was a monumentally painful process.
• Volunteer burnout was obvious. I am hoping to change that with the NC FIRST Alumni group but it is in its infancy. NC needs more volunteers. When we have them, we'll have the luxury of alternating them to help with burnout.
• Districts need to recognize additional Dean's list and WFFA recipients (though maybe as they grow? This might already be a thing and I'm just not aware).

Things that I feel should be fixed:

• NC needs more FRC Teams.
• NC needs more FRC Teams.
• NC needs more FRC Teams.

I'm sure I've got more but that's my list. At first glance it seems more negative than positive but truthfully, we enjoyed the move to districts. It was a great first year for it and I'm hoping for many more awesome years.

On the topic of the short match times, we swallowed that pill at the beginning of the season and made one of our biggest priorities being making a robot that required this'll maintenance over 150 match cycles. 50 for build and unbag and 100 plays in the regular season. This requirement forced us to simplify and use whatever trick we could in the book to "bulletproof" the machine. We were quite literally running a test chassis into walls during week 2 to see how easily we could break stuff... The regional system and district system can require two entirely different build strategies depending on the kind of team you are. For us, it meant that nothing went on the robot before we were 100% sure it was ready for prime time.

We ran 3 events in 3 weekends. I'm not even gonna ask how 125 is able to run 4 events in 4 weekends, including literally simultaneously running a district event in the middle. Thankfully for everyone, our last event led into Easter, which led into spring break. The kids just completed their first normal week of school since the first week in March; I can't believe I haven't gotten a call from the director at the school about it. It's a grind, yo.

The worst part for me the whole season was paying for the stupid decision November me made, where I got home from Asheville at 1am Monday morning, then proceeded to shotgun unbag time in between work class and "sleep". That is a grind. What's crazy is that some kvs were pulling that as well, just replacing unbag time with field setup time. Now is the time for these emerging districts to embrace all of the great alumni I know we are producing.

I am not much of a fan of the current state of the " R" in FIRST. I think the changes FIRST is implementing through Dean's List modifications are damaging an already somewhat controversial award. The WFA committee is trying to keep themselves from almost actually drowning in essays, but I don't know for sure if it's the right solution to the obvious problem. I have immense respect for all of the crazy men and women who take time out of their job, their mentoring, and the people they probably share houses with and identify as their family to judge the essays, but I wonder if they think it's tenable long term? I also wonder what they think about having Minnesota get 4 wffas a year while FiM, MAR, PNW, and NE get as many with over double the team count... I guess people can and will say that it's an honor for anyone to be nominated for these awards, but if that comes from someone who, you know, actually won the award already, my eyes will probably roll out of my head.

Also, those floors are terrible. We had to unload our robot cart so it wouldn't sink in queue.

[Jim Wilks]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I am not much of a fan of the current state of the " R" in FIRST. I think the changes FIRST is implementing through Dean's List modifications are damaging an already somewhat controversial award. The WFA committee is trying to keep themselves from almost actually drowning in essays, but I don't know for sure if it's the right solution to the obvious problem. I have immense respect for all of the crazy men and women who take time out of their job, their mentoring, and the people they probably share houses with and identify as their family to judge the essays, but I wonder if they think it's tenable long term? I also wonder what they think about having Minnesota get 4 wffas a year while FiM, MAR, PNW, and NE get as many with over double the team count... I guess people can and will say that it's an honor for anyone to be nominated for these awards, but if that comes from someone who, you know, actually won the award already, my eyes will probably roll out of my head.

My thoughts exactly.