Off-season competetions and former teams

[Venkatesh]

Do any off season competetions allow former teams (ie ones not registered for that year's competetion) to participate?

And are any of these held before the end of the 2005 school year?

I see this as having some logistic difficulties (an uninspected robot, a team not having new parts, etc), but I haven't been able to find any competetion that expressly forbids past teams. Anyone with experience or power, please enlighten me.

Thanks.

[Ryan Foley]

In 2002 team 350 was not in FIRST, but competed at River Rage with our modified 2001 robot. You just need to get permission from the competition hosts as to whether or not you can particpate.

I have found that many competitions are ok with this, so long as you follow all current FIRST regulations for that year. Obviously there are some rules you can't possibly follow, such as with new parts and such, so we had to follow as many as we possibly could.

[Billfred]

Well, I haven't had any experience with former teams, but I have seen firsthand teams that don't exist yet competing. Down at Robot Rodeo, three rookie teams for 2005 wound up driving retired boxes-on-wheels from 2003. Possibly earlier.

But the best strategy is to contact the host of the event and ask.

[LBK Rules]

That is good to know. Our team is not competing this year, and it would be a neat opporitunity to still participate at an unofficial event.

[Bharat Nain]

I think about 3 teams came in with 2003 bots or earlier to brunswick eruption and they worked fine on the field, and ofcourse learnt a lot. One of them was a rookie team who just registered their team # for the 2005 season. Off season competitions are not to be taken seriously[as in game play], they are meant to learn and have fun. I look at them as a rookie training session for our team and rookie teams.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Team 19 competed at Beantown Blitz. They didn't complete this year, either.