[FRC Blog] FIRST Championship District Allocations

[bdaroz]

FIRST Championship District Allocations - 14 Dec 2016

http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...ct-allocations

FIRST Championship District Allocations
Written by Frank Merrick.


On Saturday, we took a snapshot of ‘secured’ teams from the Districts and FIRST Robotics Competition overall. Teams are ‘secured’ if they have either paid their registration fee or have provided us with a purchase order or letter of commitment from a grantor or sponsor formally committing to payment.

We used this snapshot to allocate FIRST Championship slots to Districts, as described in this blog. We use secured teams for these calculations rather than simply all teams that are currently registered and waitlisted for events as we have great confidence that secured teams will actually be participating this year. While we continue to work to secure teams, we have less confidence those teams not yet secured will actually be participating this season.

If you are interested in seeing the details on the calculation use to allocate these slots, click here.


These allocations were shared with District management on Monday. You can see them below. Recall that these FIRST Championship slots are guaranteed to Districts. Should a given team ‘in the green’ for attending Championship decline the invitation, the highest ranked not-yet-invited team for that District gets an invite, and on down the line until all slots are filled or the District runs out of teams.


FIRST Championship, Houston

Allocated Slots

FIRST Israel -16
FIRST North Carolina - 15
Pacific Northwest - 39
Peachtree - 18



FIRST Championship, St. Louis

Allocated Slots

FIRST Chesapeake - 23
FIRST in Michigan - 82
Indiana FIRST - 10
Mid-Atlantic Robotics - 22
New England - 37
Ontario - 29


Frank

[jlmcmchl]

(Sub)Divisions are going to be 50 teams this year, right?

FiM is allocated 2 or 4x as much as any other district, and more than enough to fill a division, almost two. That's a lot of the field.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

(Sub)Divisions are going to be 50 teams this year, right?

FiM is allocated 2 or 4x as much as any other district, and more than enough to fill a division, almost two. That's a lot of the field.

I really don't think this is coincidental with the upcoming move to Detroit. The team density in Southeast Michigan is ridiculous compared to, well, everywhere else.

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I really don't think this is coincidental with the upcoming move to Detroit. The team density in Southeast Michigan is ridiculous compared to, well, everywhere else.

To be fair, it's also probably the appropriate proportion of FiM teams against the number of teams in areas allocated for North Champs.

I seem to remember all but a small handful of schools in Oakland County, maybe enough to count on your hands, don't have a FRC team. But I heard that some time ago, so you're free to take it with a grain of salt.

[Nate Laverdure]

Compared to last year's allocations (7.4.4 of 2016 admin manual)

FIRST Chesapeake -2
Mid-Atlantic Robotics even
Indiana FIRST +1
New England +3
FIRST North Carolina +5
FIRST in Michigan +6
Peachtree +6
Pacific Northwest +9

[Bkeeneykid]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

7.4.4 of 2016 admin manual

As yes, the time where we could just simply cite a rule number rather than a link to a website that will probably change without notice....

Is this too passive aggressive against FIRST?

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by jlmcmchl

(Sub)Divisions are going to be 50 teams this year, right?

FiM is allocated 2 or 4x as much as any other district, and more than enough to fill a division, almost two. That's a lot of the field.

I believe FIRST announced somewhere they are targeting 400 teams per Championship Event and 6 sub-divisions, so that's about 67 teams per subdivision. Still smaller than any division or sub-division back to 2004 (which were 73 teams each)

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

Compared to last year's allocations (7.4.4 of 2016 admin manual)

FIRST Chesapeake -2
Mid-Atlantic Robotics even
Indiana FIRST +1
New England +3
FIRST North Carolina +5
FIRST in Michigan +6
Peachtree +6
Pacific Northwest +9

Didn't they say that all districts would gain at least one spot? How does Chesapeake lose two then?

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by TDav540

Didn't they say that all districts would gain at least one spot? How does Chesapeake lose two then?

Not really. Frank said

...if 2017 were to look like 2016 with respect to team counts, all Districts will have at least one more guaranteed slot at their Championship than they did in 2016

But this did not happen. Instead, the number of CHS teams counted as "secured" in this calculation dropped something like 13% to 115. EDIT note that 129 CHS teams are currently registered.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

Not really. [url="http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2017-first-championships-allocations-for-districts"]
Instead, the number of CHS teams counted as "secured" in this calculation dropped something like 13% to 115. EDIT note that 129 CHS teams are currently registered.

go us

[bkahl]

What a meme.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by TDav540

Didn't they say that all districts would gain at least one spot? How does Chesapeake lose two then?

When in doubt, blame Wil Payne.

(I have nothing else to add to this discussion)

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

When in doubt, blame Wil Payne.

(I have nothing else to add to this discussion)

i feel personally attacked

[marshall]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

FIRST Championship District Allocations - 14 Dec 2016

http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...ct-allocations

So this system incentivizes the districts to move to the PNW style model or am I wrong? In that model I believe the district pays FIRST HQ and then the teams pay the district.

Doing that would result in like 90%+ teams having secured funding and thus more teams going on to championships. The district directors (particularly ours) have no qualms about wanting their own teams to be successful at championships and to do that they need to get them there first.

So I don't quite understand this process... It seems to be at odds with some of the stated goals for FIRST.

It seems to incentivize districts with smaller numbers of teams so larger percentages get paid up and thus more of that district's teams go on to play.

It also seems to incentivize districts with teams who can secure funding which means more rural areas that have a harder time getting funding secured are less likely to have more spots. Those same rural teams are more likely to have underserved and minority youths.

I swear I just took some training material about unconscious bias and one of the things I learned was that by looking for students in specific locations and not targeting the whole community we end up getting a less diverse team.

Isn't the same true for the championship events? Don't we end up with a less diverse group of teams by ensuring that only teams that can pay can go? I mean, FRC is inherently unfair but this seems super backwards with the stated goals.

I really don't know how I feel about this. On the surface this doesn't seem quite right. I was more ok with them basing it on the number of teams in each district.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by marshall

So this system incentivizes the districts to move to the PNW style model or am I wrong? In that model I believe the district pays FIRST HQ and then the teams pay the district.

Doing that would result in like 90%+ teams having secured funding and thus more teams going on to championships. The district directors (particularly ours) have no qualms about wanting their own teams to be successful at championships and to do that they need to get them there first.

So I don't quite understand this process... It seems to be at odds with some of the stated goals for FIRST.

It seems to incentivize districts with smaller numbers of teams so larger percentages get paid up and thus more of that district's teams go on to play.

It also seems to incentivize districts with teams who can secure funding which means more rural areas that have a harder time getting funding secured are less likely to have more spots. Those same rural teams are more likely to have underserved and minority youths.

I swear I just took some training material about unconscious bias and one of the things I learned was that by looking for students in specific locations and not targeting the whole community we end up getting a less diverse team.

Isn't the same true for the championship events? Don't we end up with a less diverse group of teams by ensuring that only teams that can pay can go? I mean, FRC is inherently unfair but this seems super backwards with the stated goals.

I really don't know how I feel about this. On the surface this doesn't seem quite right. I was more ok with them basing it on the number of teams in each district.

it currently is heavily incentivizing districts to exist in the not north part of the continental US