The threepeat

[MasonMM]

Originally Posted by Katy

However after winning a regional chairmans maybe next year that team should have to submit to another regional. Short of the regional in Israel...most of the time the regional chairman's winner is a team that attends multiple regionals or one that easily has the ability to. Moving to a different regional gives teams from the local regional a new chance at the award and also gives the winning team a chance to compete.

I couldn't imagine FIRST ever making a rule that you had to go somewhere else to compete for chairmans if you've won it before. Prior to this year, the robonauts have always only attended one regional and we have one chairmans there. It'd be an awkward position if we knew the only way we could continue to compete was if we went somewhere else, almost like we aren't wanted in our home regional.

When i hear the word Regional i think about the region that a team is from. It is my personal belief that with chairmans a team should represent there region when competing at a regional for that award. Traveling to another regional for robot competition is a different story, as it makes more competitive bots.... but traveling to another area of the country for the advantage of having a better chance to win regionals chairmans award seems very unprofessional and almost unfair to the native teams of that region. Here in Texas theres alot of open plains and areas where it is much harder to promote robotics education just because some communities are... behind... the technology curve, but teams still prosper, yet it is harder for them to reach out to other communities because things are so spread out and funding is harder and so on, but in Michigan huge industrials centers and a much larger number of sponsors and other teams, so a team coming from Michigan to compete against the Texas chairmans teams at the same regional isn't a fair competition. You should be awarding the best team in that region based on the conditions of that region, and leave it to the national level to designate which team has the best job across the whole country. Again this is only my personal belief.