Question of the Week!!! (6/14/04)

[dez250]

I personally think that in some areas there are alot, take the north east for an exmple. There are like 15 or more through out the off season here, while in California theres like 3. But even though the many up here are used well for training and to have fun at, i think personally it may be too many. This is because there are truely not as many people that are trained that can make all of them to have them be top class. So while a few get an amazing crew, BTB, BC5, Brunswick Eruption and some others, there are still others that dont get a well trained staff and suffer because of it. I think some groups that have multiple in the same local area, should think sometimes about quality instead of quanity...

[tiffany34990]

well for florida-- we do have stuff going on-- not a lot-- but i know slowly we're getting more cause many teams down here want to do stuff--not as big as the northeastern sector--or as big as iri


enjoy all the summer fun and all the off season competitions

[Berserker]

there is no such thing as too many offseason competitions

[Justin]

It is interesting up here in New England. As I first think about it I think there are a ton of offseason comps. Then I think about something that has always bothered me, July. Most of the comps up here are in Jun and August/ September/October. It seems that there are never any comps in New England Proper in July. If there is one PM me and I'll stand corrected ;-) Given that the comps seem to be bunched together and there is a lull in the July I don't think there are to many. It is tough when they are bunched together though. I think Mayhem suffered a little in terms of attendence being so close to BattleCry. For what its worth I think BattleCry is a great comp but perhaps it is getting a little to big? 40 Teams?? 2 days?? They're running a regional which may or may not be a bad thing.

Justin

[Lisa Perez]

Michigan has the Sweet Repeat, and now, the Albion competition. Also, Kettering, but I haven't heard anything about it yet.

And I don't know if you'd consider OCCRA to be an off-season competition grouping, because we don't use the same robots and the game is different. Most consider it a season in itself. Nonetheless, it keeps us busy during the FIRST off-season.

Anyways, getting back to the question, I think that we have a good, happy amount of competitions here. Because of the number of teams that participate in FIRST in Michigan, participation in the off-season events as well is pretty high.

[EddieMcD]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

Question of the Week (6/14/04):

Do you feel that your region of the country has become overly saturated with offseason competitions, or do you feel your area needs more?

I live in New England. 'Nuff said.

Okay, in all seriousness, New England is FIRST central. And like American expansion, FIRST started in the east and moved westward. First with teams, then when there were enough, regionals (almost like cities based off villages). Off-seasons follow the same trend (cities turning to a metropolis). Because New England has had FIRST for the longest, it's stable ground. This includes it having more teams (a lot of them older teams). So we get the majority of off-seasons here. Kinda like most of the American economy is based on the east coast, but things have always been gradually expanding westward.

Back off my tangent, I personally feel you can never have too many competitions. It's when two are one right after the other (like Battlecry and Mayhem) that you have a problem. I feel that we can reliably have one a month between May and November, and that is a good amount of FIRST. So IMO, I personally think that New England has the right amount of off-season competitions currently, although I wouldn't have a problem with the occasional minor one popping up every so often.

[ColleenShaver]

Being from New England... there are plenty of off-season competitions, but I'd never say too many. Maybe this is a good time/place to bring up the value of these off-season competitions to teams. We typically hit up 6+ off-season events in a year, most within 2 hours, maybe a couple a bit further away. For $100-300 you can get a full day (or two) of matches, a really fun and relaxed atmosphere and a great learning experience and opportunity for students on the team. We sign up for any off-season that any of the kids want to go to.. even if it's just 2-3 HS kids that are interested. For many of them, it's an opportunity to practice driving if they weren't selected as drivers in the regular season, or a chance to get more involved in the pit and learn where they weren't as confident during the regular season. Not only that, for the thousands of dollars teams spend on these robots, you've got to play them hard and lots to get its worth..

So I agree, the sky's the limit! It's sad to see more teams not taking advantage of all the off-season opportunities available to them. There are some many great events out there. We made the choice a couple years ago that instead of adding one more regular season event to our roster, we could add several off-season within varying distances and it would be much more rewarding.

Too many off-seasons, never. Too few teams at them, always!

[skrussel]

The SCREAM Team and Ford hosts the Sweet Repeat every year. We had a meeting about this very topic recently, and the result is that we chose to make the Sweet Repeat bigger and better.

Competition is good.......it either kills you, or makes you stronger!

[Koko Ed]

You can never have enough FIRST!