Block seating for teams in division stands?

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Maybe I'm just way out of the loop here, but from what I can see, this isn't that critical of a problem that FIRST officials must be involved. I highly empathize with you and not being able to stake those seats: it has happened to my team numerous times, so I do speak with some experience.

However, at competition, especially Nationals, as the day goes on, a team that reserves too many seats may see leakage into their chunk. If they're not actually using those seats, they don't tend to notice. Maybe I just sat by really nice teams, but everyone I saw understood the big team issue.

If you really want to cover this, it could be done at a "mentor meeting" or "team leader meeting" before the event. These things would be highlighted:

You can stake out a maximum of X rows in the stands. We will not monitor it, but that's the polite allowance for your team.

You are responsible for being courteous to those who may need to sit down during competition.

Priority during finals for seats goes to teams competing in finals.

The last item is the one that could be most easily highlighted. I feel that a team in the finals, especially in a huge Championship venue, should have priority over front seats. Our team made it a point to move a few rows back when we weren't selected to make room for teams who were selected to see better.

Good luck with this issue. It is best tackled with a planning committee or a meeting, not by creating a set of rules that will simply be resented and bent.

- Genia

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by Eugenia Gabrielov

Maybe I'm just way out of the loop here, but from what I can see, this isn't that critical of a problem that FIRST officials must be involved. I highly empathize with you and not being able to stake those seats: it has happened to my team numerous times, so I do speak with some experience.

However, at competition, especially Nationals, as the day goes on, a team that reserves too many seats may see leakage into their chunk. If they're not actually using those seats, they don't tend to notice. Maybe I just sat by really nice teams, but everyone I saw understood the big team issue.

If you really want to cover this, it could be done at a "mentor meeting" or "team leader meeting" before the event. These things would be highlighted:

You can stake out a maximum of X rows in the stands. We will not monitor it, but that's the polite allowance for your team.

You are responsible for being courteous to those who may need to sit down during competition.

Priority during finals for seats goes to teams competing in finals.

The last item is the one that could be most easily highlighted. I feel that a team in the finals, especially in a huge Championship venue, should have priority over front seats. Our team made it a point to move a few rows back when we weren't selected to make room for teams who were selected to see better.

Good luck with this issue. It is best tackled with a planning committee or a meeting, not by creating a set of rules that will simply be resented and bent.

- Genia

That gets my vote

[Kims Robot]

Im not sure if I am remembering this correctly, but I believe ages ago, when FIRST was back in Disney, they actually had 3-4 rows of reserved up front seating or standing room (depending on the stage), and that section went to the teams that were competing in that round. As soon as your round was over, you were asked to move out and sit elsewhere.

I think this is a fair way to do things, and allows teams to sit close to the action. Some of the other ideas posted here are good as well.

We did have issues with seating as well, and as mentioned, we probably did break the "no blocking off seating" rule, but as explained, it was because we need to keep track of our students. I did have to explain to one of our chaperones that we really couldnt throw anyone out of our seating area, though, because of that rule (which is fair).

I guess my only issue is that my whole team couldnt sit together for the awards ceremony because we tried to find sections to sit in, but by the time our entire team could get there, other teams had filled in and taken all the seats around us... we won the rookie all star, and man would that have been a huge group hug had we all be together

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

Im not sure if I am remembering this correctly, but I believe ages ago, when FIRST was back in Disney, they actually had 3-4 rows of reserved up front seating or standing room (depending on the stage), and that section went to the teams that were competing in that round. As soon as your round was over, you were asked to move out and sit elsewhere.

At Epcot, at the Einstein field tent, the fans for the teams involved in matches queued up in the standing room space just in front of the stage and entered from the right and exited from the left (as you faced the stage). Pretty entertaining in the quarterfinal and semifinal matches - a little like "ring-around-the-rosie"...

[mtaman02]

Galileo didn't seem to have too big of a problem with seat reserving then again nobody has mentioned it till now so as for an answer there is known except what has previously been suggested. When You sign up your team for the Championship you enter X-Amount of team members and the last week before the event you Confirm those numbers, After that has been done upon registering in atlanta pit registration will assign tickets with numbers on it designating seat # and row # If you do this correctly you may have a chance in keeping your team together. Team Members doing Media for the team get excluded from the total amount of team members accompanying the team and will have to register the same way but will be stuck next to the field (basically anyone doing Media will take priority over teams).