How do you grow your off-season competition?

[Koko Ed]

Kettering Kickoff had 47 yeams at it's event. It started out bad with a team impacting the wall in autonomous that is shut down the event for half an hour to dealing with teams having issues connecting with the field and a very competitive eliminations (most of the teams at the event were at MSC). The competition ended at 9pm! If you are doing a one day event I would recommend using no more than 42 teams at most and going with 32 to 36 teams instead.

[prozack19]

i just want to point out that team 25 is hosting Brunswick eruption this weekend. they while have 45 teams competing. i attend last year as well with i believe the same amount of teams. they manage to give each team 5 matches if i remember correctly with only one field. they have more teams then a usual district competition in my area and its run so smoothly. they really know what they are doing.

[Lil' Lavery]

When deciding to expand your event, please consider your volunteers. Running several qualifications matches per team at a larger event means two things, quicker turnaround and longer hours. Both of those puts a tax on your volunteer base. You're going to need top notch FTAs and CSAs if you want to maintain match turnarounds around ~7 minutes, especially given that many teams are using beat-up robots and inexperienced field/pit crews. You're also going to be asking all of your volunteers to commit to an even longer day. It's on thing for a volunteer to get up early on a Saturday but still have time to drive to their home at night. It's another to have an event that doesn't end until 7 or later at night, and then have your volunteers stay for an extra hour or two to pack up the field before they can drive home. And for many of those key volunteers, the commute to your event may not be trivial.

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

You're going to need top notch FTAs and CSAs if you want to maintain match turnarounds around ~7 minutes, especially given that many teams are using beat-up robots and inexperienced field/pit crews.

THIS. We ran a 2-day event at CCC this year but fell very behind schedule due to field and robot communication difficulties. Not that our FTA crew wasn't fantastic or anything but we just weren't able to start setting up the field until later in the day due to a conflict with the school so we didn't fully get the FMS set up until after the pits closed, which means all teams had gone and we couldn't test with actual robots (the pit doors had been locked at this point). Make sure you can get your field setup early and make sure it's been tested before you begin qualification matches.