Dual fields

[Keith Chester]

The idea of dual field regionals have been in the air for some time, especially with FIRST's growth being as large as it is. Super regionals are the logical next step.

My curiosity got the best of me and I have to ask, how would we do this? If one field is 15 minutes ahead and another 15 minutes behind, the schedule would become wickedly off.

This is how I was picturing a dual field regional - two divisons, A and B, each getting a field. A team always plays on one field, never switching back and forth. The rankings are all COMBINED- so for an 80 team regional with two fields, 40 a divison, there would be one ranking system of the top 80 teams.

Finals? Top 16 seeds stand up and pick their partners from both divisions. Same rules as the top 8 finals system regionals use now. The quarter finals then take place on the two fields. The semifinalists then go to a single field and compete as if it was a regualr quarter finals. What does all this mean? There's simply one more stage of finals until you find your winners, and the regional is that much harder.

Such is my idea. Of course there could be a much easier system for organizing a dual field system...

What do you guys think? I remember that, in my freshman year of '02 at nationals, teams seemed to move across the four fields for different matches, even if the divisions never crossed over eachother. I wonder- how was that done? Or did a late field make ever other field late?

[Cory]

The Canadian Regional had two fields last year.

[Keith Chester]

Originally Posted by Cory

The Canadian Regional had two fields last year.

Really? Never knew that. Tell me- how was it ran and how successful was it?

[Ian Curtis]

If you have enough teams to warrant a duel field why not just a run it with divisions set up like the ones at the championship. Two divisions one division per field with the divisions never crossing. Each division has its own finals. Top two alliances face off and you have your champions.

[Karthik]

In 2004, the Greater Toronto Regional (Then known as the Canadian Regional) did in fact have two fields. However there were no divisions. Teams played matches on both the "Pontiac" and "Chevrolet" fields. Matches would alternate between both fields, never coinciding. This allowed for the match interval to be reduced to 3:30, which is far lower than the standard 5-7 minutes.

The top 16 teams selected alliances from the entire field of 75 teams.

It was an amazing setup, and provided a Championship like feel.

In 1998 and 1999 (possibly other years pre-98) all events had two fields. This is because the playing fields were much smaller. These events ran similarly to how Toronto was run in 2004.

[Keith Chester]

Sounds like an excellent setup, but what happend (or would happen) if one field started to fall behind because of field difficulty?

[Aaron]

its gonna be harder to find venues. Most regionals are held in arenas which barely fit pits and a field. ur gonna need twice the room, meaning a statium, some not every one has semi locally indoors.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by Cory

The Canadian Regional had two fields last year.

i heard about that. we went to that regional in 2002 and it was so packed that they were nearly an hour behind. they also had over 50 teams

[Lil' Lavery]

You can hold up to about 70-80 teams on one field (the size of a champ division) and still get a reasonable amount of matches to play.
But the duel field allows some of the larger and growing regionals (Greater Toronto, VCU, ect.) to play more teams and more matches. The biggest problem is not organization, its space. Many venues sqeez to pack in the pits and one field. The only way to add another would be to have a smaller field, or to move the pits to another part of the venue (which most agree is a bad idea).
Pro Venues have enough space to hold multiple fields, but most of the regionals are primarily sponsored by colleges, which typically lack an affiliation with a professional size venue. If we see large corporations start to sponsor regional events, or even sports teams (which with the exception of St. Louis, which the owners of the St. Louis Blues are personally financing, we probably wont see) start to sponsor the regionals then we could move into the pro venues.

[Vince lau]

Originally Posted by Aaron

i heard about that. we went to that regional in 2002 and it was so packed that they were nearly an hour behind. they also had over 50 teams

in 2002 and 2003, The Greater Toronto Regional (Canadian Regional) had both the field and pit in the same arena.. In 2004 when we had the two fields and even this year the pits were located in a smaller arena right next to the main arena..

[Mike Ciance]

the Sovereign Bank Arena for the NJ Regional has enough room for two fields, but if there were enough teams to warrent having both, then the pits would be too large to fit on the arena floor. just 53 teams and 1 field did not leave a ton of leftover space. i'm not sure where they could go exactly, but i bet some could spill out into the hallway if needed. i could see 2 fields and 60 teams working, but i'm not sure about many more.

[David Hoff]

One concern about having dual fields is that the time in between a team's matches may significantly decrease depending on the number of teams competing. If this regional was in one of the first competition weeks, then most likely a lot of teams will have a few bugs to work out and could use the 10-15 minute break to repair or improve their robot componets.