[FRC Blog] 2017 FIRST Championships Allocations for Districts

[Brian Maher]

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

I like this a lot and think first hq would too. However, with south Champs and the gigantic number of waitlist spots it may actually be a problem filling them if only teams who haven't been to Champs in a cycle are eligible. For North Champs on the other hand I think this could work.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

If the goal is truly to ensure as many teams as possible get a Championship trip every four years, I'd like to propose a tweak to the waitlist system:

Continue to calculate waitlist lottery entries the same as currently, except do not consider teams who have attended Champs in the preceding three seasons. This way, a team cannot attend via waitlist twice during the same 4-year student turnover cycle, ensuring teams who have never or have not in a long time competed at Champs are more likely to get a chance.

I think this tweak would better align with FIRST's stated goal to better spread out the Championship experience to teams who would not otherwise receive it.

This would be a good change, eventually, but I think at this point, we actually do get pretty far down the Championship waitlist by the time St. Louis / Houston rolls around (even if many of those invites are too late for teams to accept them). Particularly with the extra spots.

There's also some value in extending waitlist spots to teams who will probably eventually qualify - those teams get to start planning sooner, and the spot isn't wasted when a different team gets their waitlist spot later.