Teams attending three regionals...

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Kyle45

My team will only go to 2 regionals plus nationals. Basically the reason, as I know, is that you need to have a real robust robot to stand up to 4 competitions before you can really fix anything "big" on it. Maybe next year though. Karthik I'll bring the Waterloo idea up to Baker next time around. I want to go to Canada, what else is there to do around the Toronto area. Just PM me with that stuff. Thanks!

-Kyle

Well... Kyle makes things seem like they are all up to me. That is surely not the case. The regionals we attend as a team is always based on a team decision. We weigh our options. Many reasons depend on school issues, timing, location, and student availablity to be excused from classes. The reason why we won't do three regionals this year has nothing to do with robot durability.

We did 3 regionals in 2003, and it was tough on the team. Students missed much school, and we decided that it was too taxing on everyone. Our robot benefitted fromt the process, as we got more time to improve it.

If the timing was "just right", then we might do 3 regionals in future years, but again, it would be a team decision... not just my opinion.

I really do with that we could attend the Waterloo Regional this coming year. We are jealous of other teams who get to attend.

Andy B.

[Ricky Q.]

Attending multiple regionals in one year is an advantage to a team, no question about that. The reason we qualified for Nationals in 2004 was because we had the St. Louis Regional to compete at and work out the kinks in our machine and our strategies. We came out of STL with confidence and knew what we had to do to win, and it worked.

Attending one competition is taxing enough, on the machine and the people involved with the team. Anything added to that one is even more challenging, you need to have dedicated people and a robust robot. Cooney Quest went through 4 competitions last year (STL, Midwest, Nats, and IRI) and our machine just got better as the year went on. We won 2 events (Midwest and IRI) and that robot can still compete with the best of them (besides being an ungly rust bucket).

For teams attending more than 1 regional, watch out for them in their late regionals and at nationals, they will have the 2005 game down.