Ontario Moving to District Model in 2017

[Kleiman]

Originally Posted by Karthik

All prices are below are in Canadian Dollars based off today's USD-CAD exchange rate of 1.28.



For a team who currently goes to two events, there's an instant savings of over $4000.00 CAD. That savings increases further if you compare the cost of attending 3 Regionals vs 2 Districts and the discounted District Championship. Teams will be having a lot of money put right back into their pockets to start the season.

For years teams have been pushing for this transition to districts in order to take advantage of these savings. Now that FIRST Canada has made the jump it's up to the teams to give back and help make this happen.

Teams previously attending one nearby regional will now need to attend two district events just to qualify for regionals. With TDSB covering the cost of registration for one event in previous years, this means that teams who used to pay $0 to register will now pay $2500 just to participate. Add to this the extra time, planning and cost involved in having to attend at least one out of city two day event. If we qualify for regionals that's another $1500 of non-TDSB reimbursed funds and another out of town 3 day event. Now let's imagine qualifying for St. Louis.

This new system is essentially squeezing out small, but currently sustainable teams in favor of big budget, mentor heavy teams that already have robust programs. The only advantage I can see here is more rounds of play for better value. The trade off is taking away the entire FIRST experience from smaller scale teams. We were alliance captains and semi-finalists this year. Next year, I am nearly certain that our team must fold. This is deeply disappointing.