How many off season events?

[Ringo5tarr]

I see that the Off Season board is very popular right now, and I understand why. But my team pretty much shuts down completely after school ends, aside from a couple of demonstrations and camps for sponsorship reasons, so if this board is so popular, how many events do you guys go to? 1764 only does one, CowTown throwdown, which takes place around halloween.

[niklas674]

Team 701 generally goes to two offseason events. This year we are going to Chezy Champs and Capital City Classic. Last year we did Capital City Classic and Cal Games. Overall going to two events gives anyone going for drive team a chance to somewhat experience what it will be like to be on drive team during competition seasons.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I believe 1058 is going to 6 in total this year, which is about their average. 229 is hoping to go to one in the fall.

In the end it comes down to your teams competitive philosophy and all of the logistics. 229 is mentored mostly by college students so the team doesn't meet or travel between the months of May and September. 1058 meets every week throughout the year so they have a very different situation. Not to mention how much location matters: New England is filled to the brink with offseason events, while NY has a smaller amount.

[Hikel team 319]

As Jay mentioned, the number of off-season events available to attend is largely based on location. 319 is lucky enough to be in New England where there are several off-season events. We use the events as recruitment tools and to aid in operator training.
319 will attend 6 off-season events, which includes hosting The Battle Of the Bay, on November 12. The final New England Stronghold event.
There are still open spaces. Your team can register here

http://www.frc319.com/#!register/c1dfy

[Koko Ed]

My team goes to one (Rah Cha Cha Ruckus) and I, myself, will be going to 12 by the end of the off season.

[Bkeeneykid]

While I am also disappointed that there's only one in KC, there are other options. For one, you can try 5013's Drive Hard event (https://trobots.org), or you can try a close by off season. KC FIRST's calendar has a few listen on that for October (http://www.kcfirst.org/events).

Just like you, though, we just go to Cow Town every year, or at least that has been our plan so far. We plan on going to Drive Hard and potentially another off season, but that's yet to be determined.

[MikLast]

Until this year, we have done no offseason events, basically shutting down until september. This year we have camps that are going on starting next week, and there is still talk of going to an offseason event this year.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I believe 1058 is going to 6 in total this year, which is about their average. 229 is hoping to go to one in the fall.

In the end it comes down to your teams competitive philosophy and all of the logistics. 229 is mentored mostly by college students so the team doesn't meet or travel between the months of May and September. 1058 meets every week throughout the year so they have a very different situation. Not to mention how much location matters: New England is filled to the brink with offseason events, while NY has a smaller amount.

August & December are the only months up here we don't have competitions outside of the official season. Even then with 166 pulling double duty they host the official Week Zero Scrimmage in February so robot season really doesn't end there is always one more competition around the corner.

By the end of the year we will be pushing 150 matches but that's normal up here especially with teams like 125 and 195.

[RoboChair]

This year we will be going to Capitol City Classic, Chezy Champs, and Mad Town Throwdown. We have done this the last 2 years as well, bringing us to 7 events total each year, 3 offseason, 3 regionals, and Champs. It keeps us pretty busy.

[ASD20]

My team has only attended the Beantown Blitz the past few years, though I'm pretty sure we've been registered for like 3.

(P.S. You might want to add a poll to this thread)

[Allison K]

Our goal is to do enough offseasons that every student spends at least one full event on field crew (driver, operator, coach, human player) and one full event on pit crew. The past couple years that's worked out to about three events, at least one of which we run multiple robots.

[Cothron Theiss]

Originally Posted by ASD20

(P.S. You might want to add a poll to this thread)

+1

[MARS_James]

Team 179 is going to be doing 4 offseasons this year. IRI, Panther Prowl, Roboticon, and Mission Mayhem.

[346CADmen]

346 is planning for 2 this year (IROC & Rumble in the Roads)
While we had an invite to IRI it just wasn't to be this year.

Last year was 3 as we traveled to NY for the Rah-Cha-Cha Ruckus, a terrific event.

Off season is a good way to go outside the district.

[Siri]

1640 varies by how much training needs to be done. The height of crazy was in in our post-Ultimate Ascent "We've gotta get back to Einstein!" delirium, where we did 7 off-seasons including IRI. We were already in the district system, which meant that the 2013 season included 11 events (22 days) in the 33 weeks between 2 March and 19 October. Meaning that, to achieve Einstein 2013 and train up for Einstein 2014, the team did the equivalent of a Saturday event every week and a half between the beginning of March and mid-October. This is not counting team volunteers; I did something like 13 FRC and 16 FIRST events that year, including the 2 FLL events the team hosted.

On one level it was fantastic to get that much practice, with students comparing it to standard athletics where games and scrimmages happen all the time in-season. On the other hand...phew.