[FRC Blog] FIRST Championship District Allocations

[marshall]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

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

Well you know, we have better BBQ down south.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by marshall

Well you know, we have better BBQ down south.

yeah, like in texas

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by marshall

....

To take a break from the meme game all of us regional and district teams had the same day to get our money in and finish registering for events, and that day was November 28th according to FIRST's website. FIRST waited 12 days to get the capture the number of teams.

What confuses me is the discrepancy between the FIRST site team listing and FIRST's internal numbers. Why are there 14 teams from The Chesapeake district who are listed in events but haven't paid? I only ask because on one very embarrassing occasion I got the registration payment date wrong and my team was kicked from our event. I figured this was standard procedure.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

yeah, like in texas

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

To take a break from the meme game all of us regional and district teams had the same day to get our money in and finish registering for events, and that day was November 28th according to FIRST's website. FIRST waited 12 days to get the capture the number of teams.

What confuses me is the discrepancy between the FIRST site team listing and FIRST's internal numbers. Why are there 14 teams from The Chesapeake district who are listed in events but haven't paid? I only ask because on one very embarrassing occasion I got the registration payment date wrong and my team was kicked from our event. I figured this was standard procedure.

Some of it could be prearranged things like "hey we're having issues with getting checks cut from our school/sponsor" or working with the RD to secure funding.

[TDav540]

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.

I'm gonna be honest Marshall, I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Yes, you're right, it does incentivize the PNW model, but that model has a lot of positives to it, so I'm not sure why that would be a negative.

Second, if you haven't secured funding at this point in the season, it isn't too unreasonable to think that you might not actually play, and furthermore, might not be able to fund a trip to Championship.

Third, yeah, we do end up with a slightly less diverse group of teams at Championship if we don't include the teams who can't pay to go. But Championship has always had an entry fee, which right now is the same as the standard registration. So that really isn't a change from anything else we've been doing. If a team is struggling to pay for their regular event, why would they be able to go to Champs?

To me, this system rewards districts which have already (with less than 25 days left till kickoff) found funding for their teams.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by TDav540

I'm gonna be honest Marshall, I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Yes, you're right, it does incentivize the PNW model, but that model has a lot of positives to it, so I'm not sure why that would be a negative.

Second, if you haven't secured funding at this point in the season, it isn't too unreasonable to think that you might not actually play, and furthermore, might not be able to fund a trip to Championship.

Third, yeah, we do end up with a slightly less diverse group of teams at Championship if we don't include the teams who can't pay to go. But Championship has always had an entry fee, which right now is the same as the standard registration. So that really isn't a change from anything else we've been doing. If a team is struggling to pay for their regular event, why would they be able to go to Champs?

To me, this system rewards districts which have already (with less than 25 days left till kickoff) found funding for their teams. Which makes perfect sense to me.

As I said, I don't know how I feel about it. It just strikes me as not quite right on the surface. I'm open to options but this was presented without a full picture to me.

[yarden.saa]

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

FIRST Israel +10 (moved from regional to districts)

[Chris is me]

You can clearly notice that if a region is going to South Champs, they got way more additional spots than if they are going to North Champs.

This really is not resulting in "bringing the Championship experience to more teams" in an equitable manner between the halves. The north half gets zero benefit from this split other than 1/3rd fewer teams at their event.

I'm sure the FIRST BoD will deem this split a success regardless of what happens, though. The numbers went up, more registration fees entered the account, the people that made the decision who didn't have to do any of the implementation will feel good while the staff who has to pick up the pieces of this top-down decision will struggle through these growing pains and bear most of the complaints.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

You can clearly notice that if a region is going to South Champs, they got way more additional spots than if they are going to North Champs.

This really is not resulting in "bringing the Championship experience to more teams" in an equitable manner between the halves. The north half gets zero benefit from this split other than 1/3rd fewer teams at their event.

I'm sure the FIRST BoD will deem this split a success regardless of what happens, though. The numbers went up, more registration fees entered the account, the people that made the decision who didn't have to do any of the implementation will feel good while the staff who has to pick up the pieces of this top-down decision will struggle through these growing pains and bear most of the complaints.

Other than getting rid of two champs, or moving the locations to make them more geographically balanced... what's the solution here?

If FIRST gave districts equal representation divided among both champs but a norther district was given the southern champs likely 2-4x farther from them, would that be acceptable?

Not disagreeing with you, more so rambling about how the quantity and locations of two champs makes it really hard to make any such assignment equitable.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Other than getting rid of two champs, or moving the locations to make them more geographically balanced... what's the solution here?

If FIRST gave districts equal representation divided among both champs but a norther district was given the southern champs likely 2-4x farther from them, would that be acceptable?

Not disagreeing with you, more so rambling about how the quantity and locations of two champs makes it really hard to make any such assignment equitable.

It's a tough problem, but I think it would have been better to either make or allow more teams from the north to travel south, even if it's a bit farther travelling than going to the North Championship. As long as it's not drastically worse than travel to Atlanta / STL, it's not a huge problem, and it would make distribution better.

The choices for locations are limited, but I think it would have been better to put more focus on a roughly equal number of eligible teams for each event versus minimizing travel time. That, or allow for some more "flex states" in the model that can pick either or, instead of the current system of a big wall with a few holes in it via the waitlist.

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

It's a tough problem, but I think it would have been better to either make or allow more teams from the north to travel south, even if it's a bit farther travelling than going to the North Championship. As long as it's not drastically worse than travel to Atlanta / STL, it's not a huge problem, and it would make distribution better.

I might be talking out my back side a bit here but, off the top of my head...

What if each district were assigned x number of additional spots in their non-home champs. I'd also argue their main allocation would need to be at 2016 (or slightly lower) levels, but the total allocation would be larger.

And to be fair, the southern districts would also gain additional slots to attend the north as well, albeit perhaps not as many.

It would give FIRST a tuneable, if you will, to try to balance things.

[MARS_James]

Since this is in response to a bunch of people's comments I am not quoting all of them.

When I last checked the difference between the number of teams "zoned" to each champs was +353 to North champs. However Missouri and Kansas are switching champs next year bringing the difference down to only +165. Yes that is still a lot of teams however FIRST really can't do much except hope that we have more growth in the south.

[Michael Kaurich]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

Yes that is still a lot of teams however FIRST really can't do much except hope that we have more growth in the south.

And growth in Michigan will eventually stall when every high school has a team.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

however FIRST really can't do much except hope that we have more growth in the south.

This can't be right. I'd assume FIRST has some knobs and levers to help promote regional growth. They CAN'T have been doing this for so many years without having some knowledge of how to spur growth.