2017 New York Regionals

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I understand there may have been a conflict this year with the schools that may have prevented solving this problem (though, I don't know about it, haven't heard about it, and nothing on RPI's end stands out), but I really just want to emphasize that this "conflict" happens intentionally, every year; the schools (among many other schools in the region) coordinate spring break plans. And yet, this is the first year the regionals are on the same weekend. For the past two seasons, the regionals were on back to back weekends, one at the beginning of spring break and the other at the end. There has to be something else other than "they have the same spring break" causing this conflict, such as both venues being unavailable week 4, or a director wanting to keep week 4 open for HVR, or one of the schools having an athletic event one of the weeks, or something.

I know RPI's event is in the hockey arena, not sure about RIT. But is it possible hockey schedules made for conflicting regionals?

[ghesla]

1156 always attended NJ (2003-2006) and NY state regionals. In the past 4 years we attended SBPLI regional and we felt great. Every team treat us really well.

But since last regional and now with this scenario we feel that abroad (and not local) teams are making local team's life harder.
When you realize that in Hofstra this year we had 3 or 4 pits improvised to fit, so local teams (that probably do only one regional) can attend you start thinking: should we register for this regional?

For us from brazil the only way to attend 2 regionals is playing back to back events. Hudson and SBPLI or SBPLI and NYC would be easy for us, talking about logistics and costs. But this will probably impossible to be made.


This is hard, we hope every team (specially locals) can have their spots.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Yup I know of this detail. Honestly though it may have made sense for the RD's to find another college to host one of the events at. There are so many colleges in upstate NY presumably a few would be willing to host an event. I am no regional planner but to me this seems like it would have been a solution that would make life harder for the RPC's but help the transition to districts by gaining another potential venue as well as benefiting teams. And, FIRST is here for the teams. But I am preaching to the choir here so I am going to stop. Hopefully stuff just goes better next year and hopefully we get into a second regional without a problem being its the first year we have the chance to do so.

I am by no means an expert on the topic, but couldn't the same thing be said of New York City? A quick google search for "Columbia University athletic facilities" brought me to these two links:

http://www.gocolumbialions.com/ViewA...&ATCLID=319179

http://perec.columbia.edu/content/photo-tour

Of course a first hand walk-through would be necessary to determine if the layout is suitable, but it seems like there is at least sufficient space for a small event. It reads and looks as though this would be quite accessible by public transportation on the metro.

How many such venues worth exploring exist in NYC?
Have these options been explored in the past, and what was the result?

[rpaulsen]

Originally Posted by Bluman56

With all due respect, look at the attendance rate of the HudsonValleyRally offseason event. Not every team has access to a parent with a car or a mentor with a car (for example our team has access to a car through our Lead Mentor who is a dean of the school and through a fellow mentor, both of which work in jobs that require them to be on call at all times. I imagine given the attendance rates of this event and the event in 2010, other teams share the same struggles. To be clear, if an event cannot be accessed by public transportation (MTA trains to Javits for example), many NYC teams would not attend.

I've been on the most well funded team in NYC before joining the team I'm helping now and the dynamic is strikingly different. Everything that seems like a nonissue to a medium-well funded team is a huge issue for low resource teams.

I completely agree that we need more events in the 5 boroughs. HVR is the right step towards districts, but inner city teams are being completely ignored at this point.

Look, I totally get it. And from my post, you can see that I suggesting that in order to get districts up and running we need a new event in either Queens or Brooklyn. St. John's and Queens College would both be excellent options as Sam mentioned. NYC needs to move to the District model explicitly because we have so many under funded teams who deserve to have the opportunity to compete more than once. The only problem is we need to get our number of events and most importantly our number of volunteers up to make this happen.

Imagine how hard things would have been this year if the other the Hudson Valley coaches and I, our team volunteers, and the NYCFIRST staff didn't work as hard as we did over the last two years creating the Hudson Valley Robotics Association and this new Regional event. We might have very well been in the same situation with NYC moving to the Armory and TVR/FLR falling on the same days. Honestly, I for one am excited for what ending the NYC Regional at Javits because it was the single biggest impediment to moving to Districts. Now we can focus all of that money and energy into a series of smaller much more affordable events, turning FRC into a true season rather than a one off-all or nothing event.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I know RPI's event is in the hockey arena, not sure about RIT. But is it possible hockey schedules made for conflicting regionals?

Is that new for this year? In the past it's been in ECAV, a basketball arena. If it's moved to the Houston Field House, that does constrain the date, but it would also probably allow for more teams to attend, so I can see why they might do that.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Is that new for this year? In the past it's been in ECAV, a basketball arena. If it's moved to the Houston Field House, that does constrain the date, but it would also probably allow for more teams to attend, so I can see why they might do that.

Maybe I'm wrong. I assumed it was the hockey arena, but you would know RPI better than I would.

[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I know RPI's event is in the hockey arena, not sure about RIT. But is it possible hockey schedules made for conflicting regionals?

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Is that new for this year? In the past it's been in ECAV, a basketball arena. If it's moved to the Houston Field House, that does constrain the date, but it would also probably allow for more teams to attend, so I can see why they might do that.

It's still in the ECAV gym (basketball), not the Field House (hockey).

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Is that new for this year? In the past it's been in ECAV, a basketball arena. If it's moved to the Houston Field House, that does constrain the date, but it would also probably allow for more teams to attend, so I can see why they might do that.

I'd be very surprised if it moved to the Field house. The ECAV is a basketball arena with the main arena floor/bleachers set up for the field, and the practice court that's adjoining used for the pits. The field house is basically the hockey floor and some hallway space. In total, a smaller useable square footage.

Now if TVR wanted to grow they could put the pits in the field house and the field in the ECAV (or vice versa), but there's an outdoor walk (and a bit of a hill) between them. And let's be honest, snow in March is not unheard of up here.

[Brian Maher]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

Now if TVR wanted to grow they could put the pits in the field house and the field in the ECAV (or vice versa), but there's an outdoor walk (and a bit of a hill) between them. And let's be honest, snow in March is not unheard of up here.

I would advise against this. The 2014 Clifton MAR event had an outside ramp connecting the field (main gym) and pits (smaller gym on another floor). It was a headache to deal with. I would not recommend this, especially with the lovely weather we get in Troy.

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by Brian Maher

I would advise against this. The 2014 Clifton MAR event had an outside ramp connecting the field (main gym) and pits (smaller gym on another floor). It was a headache to deal with. I would not recommend this, especially with the lovely weather we get in Troy.

I agree completely, however it's the only real "expansion" option on campus.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

I agree completely, however it's the only real "expansion" option on campus.

Honestly TVR is more constrained by seating space than anything else. Come eliminations it's near impossible to find somewhere to sit to watch. I'm sure we could figure out some weird way to stick pits in the hallway or something if that was the constraining factor.

There are obviously other venues in the capital region that could work, but RPI's space is pretty excellent for the little event, and they're gracious enough to let us host it there.

[Chris is me]

I was just speculating when someone said it was a hockey stadium this year. As far as I know, it's still in ECAV, a great venue, and still the same size. Adding size to TVR this year wouldn't even help the issues with scheduling at all, since it's still the same weekend as FLR and Pitt.

[Hallry]

Thread moved to the Regional Competition sub-forum.

[smistthegreat]

While we're all waiting on the registration APIs to come back so we can look at accurate data, here's some probably inaccurate data to wildly speculate on in regards to New York registration. Everything is taken from this website: http://archive.usfirst.org/whats-going-on which appears to have some old teams, duplicate teams, pre-rookies that are duplicates of existing teams, etc.

Please take this with a huge grain of salt, given some of the weird data.

That being said, I think the data is at least accurate enough to give us a "broad strokes" picture of what's happening in New York.

Out of 188* total teams, here's where they registered first:
8 Buckeye
17 Finger Lakes
1 Pittsburgh
5 Hudson Valley
1 Miami Valley
1 Midwest
1 Montreal
16 New York City
25 Long Island
13 Tech Valley
100* Not registered for a 2017 event as of 5:00PM EST

I arrived at this data by searching the above link for every team registered in NY in 2017, then looked up each team's page to see where they registered. There are probably mistakes. I've attached an excel sheet of the data I used. The first sheet is every team in NY*. The following sheets are a breakdown of registration for each of the 5 events in New York, also from the same site. I think overall, the registered team data is accurate enough, but some of the unregistered teams are likely garbage data*.

*These numbers include things that look like duplicate teams, old teams, and pre-rookie teams that show up in a search. Again, huge grain of salt.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

While we're all waiting on the registration APIs to come back so we can look at accurate data, here's some probably inaccurate data to wildly speculate on in regards to New York registration. Everything is taken from this website: http://archive.usfirst.org/whats-going-on which appears to have some old teams, duplicate teams, pre-rookies that are duplicates of existing teams, etc.

Please take this with a huge grain of salt, given some of the weird data.

That being said, I think the data is at least accurate enough to give us a "broad strokes" picture of what's happening in New York.

Out of 188* total teams, here's where they registered first:
8 Buckeye
17 Finger Lakes
1 Pittsburgh
5 Hudson Valley
1 Miami Valley
1 Midwest
1 Montreal
16 New York City
25 Long Island
13 Tech Valley
100* Not registered for a 2017 event as of 5:00PM EST

I arrived at this data by searching the above link for every team registered in NY in 2017, then looked up each team's page to see where they registered. There are probably mistakes. I've attached an excel sheet of the data I used. The first sheet is every team in NY*. The following sheets are a breakdown of registration for each of the 5 events in New York, also from the same site. I think overall, the registered team data is accurate enough, but some of the unregistered teams are likely garbage data*.

*These numbers include things that look like duplicate teams, old teams, and pre-rookie teams that show up in a search. Again, huge grain of salt.

Thanks for the data, Brian!
I bet a lot of those 100 teams are on the waitlists for SBPLI and NYC, considering how quickly they filled up.