Districts in Texas proposal sent to FIRST

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Because you get out of bag time at your own facility with access to so much more than you have at a practice day. Add in there is less stress as you don't have a LRI breathing down your neck to get inspected or other teams in your pits bothering you with useless questions like "how many wheels does your robot have?".

Also there is practice time on load in night. If you are at a place where you get inspected fast you get as much practice as you could want.

Having gone from regionals to districts and now back to regionals, I can confirm that the district method makes it way easier to work on your robot. The six hours of unbag time is better than it sounds, because you can plan everything out nicely ahead of time. Not to mention load in night is a couple hours too.

If you want to see how greatly that difference in time improves teams, look no further than how much better New England has gotten over the last few years (or any other district really).

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Having gone from regionals to districts and now back to regionals, I can confirm that the district method makes it way easier to work on your robot. The six hours of unbag time is better than it sounds, because you can plan everything out nicely ahead of time. Not to mention load in night is a couple hours too.

If you want to see how greatly that difference in time improves teams, look no further than how much better New England has gotten over the last few years (or any other district really).

Agreed I have done the same transition.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Also there is practice time on load in night. If you are at a place where you get inspected fast you get as much practice as you could want.

This is not a universally true statement. Many events have rather limited practice available on load-in night, and are primarily concerned with making sure teams connect to the field. There's no requirement that events run practice matches at all on load-in night. No teams should ever head into a district event with the expectation of more than one practice match.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Thank you! Would appreciate that very much.

A close family friend are all flying to Austin today. They moved from Waialua to Austin several years ago and going to see one of them who graduates/graduated from high school.

You are always welcome here in ATX. If you have in ever in town, just get in touch.

Lots of graduations here in Austin this week for the area. My school finished last week (lucky for us).

[nobrakes8]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

A normalizing travel stipend would do it. They'd (FIRST in Texas) just have to redirect funds to support and/or raise additional funds towards that.

I know easier said then done on the raising of the additonal funds but my experience is it's very doable in Texas.

--Michael Blake

I don't think the only issue is money. The process of getting mentors to travel, volunteers (if teams are forced to send X many volunteers), putting students up in hotels for multiple weekends, etc.. I feel is as much of a burden as the cost of travel.

Granted, many of the teams in Texas already travel least once every season as it is and I'm sure the committee has taken into account the population density of the teams.

Originally Posted by asid61

On one hand, I love district events and I think Texas moving to them is great.
On the other hand, no Texas teams in CA anymore. D:

I think I know of at least one Texas team that will travel out of state regardless of districts