Inter-District Play for 2017

[Bkeeneykid]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 8/2/16:
http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/inter-district-play-for-2017

Inter-District Play for 2017
Today's Guest Blog Post is written by Miriam Somero, FIRST Robotics Competition Area Manager.

A cross-functional task force, which included volunteers from all nine FIRST Robotic Competition Districts, met to evaluate the 2016 inter district play experience and propose a plan for inter district play for 2017.

In the 2016 season, Districts collaborated with FIRST HQ to fill any “open” district event spots with teams from other districts. An “open district spot” is defined as a spot that remains open after all teams in a district have had the opportunity to sign up for their two events plus any additional plays they desire. In 2016 we had eleven district teams take advantage of this opportunity and play inter district.

In the 2017 season inter-district play will continue in the same manner as 2016.

Teams playing at a district event outside their home district will treat the out-of-district event in a similar way that an in-district team treats an additional district event, meaning no points will be earned.

1. The event will be considered an “additional event” regardless of when it actually occurs. Example: A team from Mid-Atlantic signs up for its two official Mid-Atlantic district events, one on Week 1 and one on Week 4. Additionally, the team signs up for one of the open spots in New England during Week 3. Even though the New England event is before the team’s second official Mid-Atlantic event, the event will be treated as an additional event and the team would not earn any points at the New England event. We will retain the concept of teams only being able to earn points within their own districts. Several Districts were in favor of allowing teams to earn points outside their own Districts. However, with a change of this significance, FIRST HQ wanted a strong consensus among the Districts in favor of this change before it would be considered, and that threshold was not met. This concept will be reevaluated at the end of the 2017 season.
2. Additionally, the out-of-district team will not be eligible for the three Culture Changing Awards: Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, or Rookie All Star. These may be earned only at events within their home district. They will be eligible to win all other awards, but again, they will not earn points for these. The task force feels strongly that these most prestigious of all FRC awards should be reserved for in-district and recognized that presenting these awards to teams from outside the districts would lead to complications at the District Championship level. This direction, though, as the one above, will be evaluated at the end of the 2017 season

The cost to register for an additional play at a district event outside a team’s home district is $1,000. Teams will continue to transport their robots to the event themselves. Each event may decide whether or not to provide drayage facilities for out-of-district teams. Drayage arrangements, if any, will be posted on the event’s website. If no drayage arrangements are available through the district, it will be the out-of-district team’s responsibility, logistically and financially, to make their own arrangements to get their robot to the event.

The registration process will be as follows:

In-District additional play registration will open Thursday, November 3rd, 2016, the same day as unrestricted registration for regionals.

Inter-District registration will begin 1 week later, Thursday, November 10th.

• All teams registering inter-district will be put onto the waitlist.

Registration closes November 21st.

Teams will be notified shortly after December 11 as to whether or not a slot is available for them.

Non-district FIRST Robotic Competition teams will continue to not be eligible to participate in events within districts.

These decisions are final for the upcoming season, but as noted above, this system will be reviewed once again at the end of the 2017. Please send feedback on possible changes to inter-district play for the 2018 season to frcteams@firstinspires.org . If you are a District team, be sure also to give your feedback to your District management, as each District has direct representation on the task force making these recommendations.

[notmattlythgoe]

Not what I was hoping for, but it is what it is.

[Jon Stratis]

It's a little surprising that only 11 teams participated in inter-district play. Is that due more to availability than interest from teams?

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It's a little surprising that only 11 teams participated in inter-district play. Is that due more to availability than interest from teams?

As a lower budget team in a regional area, if there were a district close enough (for example, Texas), we would go to that in a heart beat. I find it disheartening that they still do not allow non district teams to attend district events, especially with the clarifications about earning no points. A district event would help us greatly.

[bobbysq]

It could also be that districts are relatively spread out at this point. (especially for FRC where you often only need to go as far as a state away to get to regionals)

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It's a little surprising that only 11 teams participated in inter-district play. Is that due more to availability than interest from teams?

In an already packed competition season I would imagine most teams have no interest in adding an additional practice event in their schedule. It has it's advantages but also has its disadvantages.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by bobbysq

It could also be that districts are relatively spread out at this point. (especially for FRC where you often only need to go as far as a state away to get to regionals)

Except in the case where you have MAR, CHS, and NC all neighboring each other.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It's a little surprising that only 11 teams participated in inter-district play. Is that due more to availability than interest from teams?

That's the impression I get. There is very limited availability of inter-district slots, and you don't find out if you've gotten one until very late in the registration cycle (December, when waitlists are cleared). This is too late for teams to adjust their "home" district event schedules, and too late to attend regionals or a third home district, so teams have to basically take a bet on the district event being available to them.

Regional play costs more, but you can register for that as soon as unrestricted event registration starts and if there are open slots you'll get one and be able to confirm that right away. Plus you can actually qualify at those events. So I think regionals have been more popular than inter district play.

Inter-district play can be a huge competitive advantage though if you time it right. 3314 traveled out of MAR to the Waterbury district last year, using the Week 1 event to iron out the bugs in their machine (and still put up impressive scores). This event didn't count for points for them, and they were able to take the lessons learned and then return to MAR with a more competitive robot and team.

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

Except in the case where you have MAR, CHS, and NC all neighboring each other.

CT might as well be touching NJ for the purposes of this discussion; some MAR teams have good access to some NE events and vice versa.

[Michael Kaurich]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Inter-district play can be a huge competitive advantage though if you time it right. 3314 traveled out of MAR to the Waterbury district last year, using the Week 1 event to iron out the bugs in their machine (and still put up impressive scores). This event didn't count for points for them, and they were able to take the lessons learned and then return to MAR with a more competitive robot and team.

I think week 1 is the only real way that this works and there weren't all that many week 1 events in NC, CHS, MAR... let alone ones that had space after the first round of registrations.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Michael Kaurich

I think week 1 is the only real way that this works and there weren't all that many week 1 events in NC, CHS, MAR... let alone ones that had space after the first round of registrations.

It's still an advantage, albeit much less of one, if you go to an event before your second points event.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

CT might as well be touching NJ for the purposes of this discussion; some MAR teams have good access to some NE events and vice versa.

EDIT- Indiana and Michigan are reasonably close too.


Team 74 from Michigan made it to an IN District event... From TBA it looks like that was their first event last year.

I personally would love to see more interdistrict play.

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Michael Kaurich

I think week 1 is the only real way that this works and there weren't all that many week 1 events in NC, CHS, MAR... let alone ones that had space after the first round of registrations.

Week 1 works best, but theoretically, as long as you go before your second in-district event, you should get better because of your out-of-district event*.

Additionally, travel plays a role. It takes 3 hours to get from Richmond to Raleigh. That's not too bad, but not all NC events were in the Raleigh-Durham area. If a team from Richmond wanted to go to an NC event and the Raleigh events didn't line up, a trip of 4+ hours likely awaited them. So not only do the weeks have to line up compared to your in-district events, your OOD events can't be too far away either.

*Theoretically, on average.

[Michael Kaurich]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

It's still an advantage, albeit much less of one, if you go to an event before your second points event.

It is still and advantage but much more of a logistics nightmare. A lot of Maryland Schools spring break runs right around weeks 3 and 4 which is half of the points getting opportunities for CHS.

DISCLAIMER: YMMV depending on locality. Maryland is a bit weird sometimes.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Bkeeneykid

As a lower budget team in a regional area, if there were a district close enough (for example, Texas), we would go to that in a heart beat. I find it disheartening that they still do not allow non district teams to attend district events, especially with the clarifications about earning no points. A district event would help us greatly.

It's probably been brought up before, but FIRST won't let this happen. The reason a DCMP isn't free was FIRST's decision. Charging 4k for a DCMP makes up for the fact that FIRST doesn't see 4k second regional registrations from teams in a District area.

FIRST counts on netting an extra 4k from a certain percentage (~35%) of Regional teams for second plays, just like FIRST counts netting an extra 4k from District teams for the DCMP (which happens to come out to 30-40% of teams in a given district).

Much of FIRST's operating budget is funded by FRC teams (FTC and FLL do not provide revenue to FIRST at the same level), so I don't expect to get a cheaper second play unless we go to districts.

I expect that FIRST will continue to count on netting 5-6k from all FRC teams, 4k from relatively fixed percentage (30-40%) of those teams, and 4 million dollars from FRC teams for #2champs.

-Mike

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by Michael Kaurich

I think week 1 is the only real way that this works and there weren't all that many week 1 events in NC, CHS, MAR... let alone ones that had space after the first round of registrations.

You can do a Week 4 and 5 in-district, so weeks 1-3 could all be before your first event.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

That's the impression I get. There is very limited availability of inter-district slots, and you don't find out if you've gotten one until very late in the registration cycle (December, when waitlists are cleared). This is too late for teams to adjust their "home" district event schedules, and too late to attend regionals or a third home district, so teams have to basically take a bet on the district event being available to them.

I think if FIRST/the districts really wanted to encourage inter-district play, they should at least open up registration the same time as 3rd plays.

Originally Posted by efoote868

EDIT- Indiana and Michigan are reasonably close too.

Ontario and Michigan will be pretty close, I think?