2007 Lone Star Regional

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'm finally putting up the eliminations on SOAP, so people can see what happened and make informed opinions. Also, I'm offering to make my archived footage available to other teams. See this thread for details on both.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by njamietech

... starting next year the LSR will be hosted at a facility called the Merrell Center. this facility is owned by Katy ISD (team 624's ISD). This is an official and final decision. It is still uncertain whether or not this will be permanant as it depends on whether or not the regional goes well.

Here is a link to a video describing the facility:

http://www.merrellcenter.org/facilities.htm

Was the Merrell Center construction completed very recently? The satellite view on Google Maps shows a construction site.

[CyberWolf_22]

Where will the pits be located at this new venue? Will they be on the main floor blocked off by a curtain or will they be in a separate room?

This looks like a nice venue for the regional. I am a little said because I attend Rice University which is just up the Metro Rail from Reliant Arena. It was really nice this year to be able to just hope on and go back and forth from Lone Star.

[Kymber]

Originally Posted by njamietech

Everyone intending on attending the LSR next year listen up to this post.

starting next year the LSR will be hosted at a facility called the Merrell Center. this facility is owned by Katy ISD (team 624's ISD). This is an official and final decision. It is still uncertain whether or not this will be permanant as it depends on whether or not the regional goes well.

Here is a link to a video describing the facility:

http://www.merrellcenter.org/facilities.htm

Thank you to Reliant Arena for all their years of support.

Yes we are working with the Merrell Center to host the 2008 regional there nothing is finalized at this point and until we have a contract this is not official, but this is a ONE YEAR ONLY thing, we WILL be returning to Reliant in 2009. We had to find another venue for 2008 because Reliant will be hosting the Sweet Sixteen that year. We have an amazing venue with Reliant and they go out of their way to help us make this a great event for all the teams that attend. This year not only did they open up Hall D to us so that the teams could eat inside without having to sit in the rain, they also brought chairs down without us asking and at no cost to us. It is this type of consideration and the ablility to grow at this venue that keeps our regional at Reliant.
Until we have a contract there will be no decisions made on pit and field layouts so any thing that is said by anyone other than a regional or assistant regional director for Lone Star is not accurate information. We will inform the teams that are attending of all the information they will need as soon as we have details but as of right now nothing is set in stone.

[ChuckDickerson]

Originally Posted by Kymber

Yes we are working with the Merrell Center to host the 2008 regional there nothing is finalized at this point and until we have a contract this is not official, but this is a ONE YEAR ONLY thing, we WILL be returning to Reliant in 2009. We had to find another venue for 2008 because Reliant will be hosting the Sweet Sixteen that year. We have an amazing venue with Reliant and they go out of their way to help us make this a great event for all the teams that attend. This year not only did they open up Hall D to us so that the teams could eat inside without having to sit in the rain, they also brought chairs down without us asking and at no cost to us. It is this type of consideration and the ablility to grow at this venue that keeps our regional at Reliant.
Until we have a contract there will be no decisions made on pit and field layouts so any thing that is said by anyone other than a regional or assistant regional director for Lone Star is not accurate information. We will inform the teams that are attending of all the information they will need as soon as we have details but as of right now nothing is set in stone.

Kymber, I know nothing about the new Merrell Center but the good ol' Reliant Center is hard to beat. I wonder though, when Lonestar returns to the Reliant in 2009 could it be a two field super-regional? It sure seems like Lonestar and the Reliant Center could handle it. Could it be???? Me hopes!

[Kymber]

Originally Posted by DeepWater

Kymber, I know nothing about the new Merrell Center but the good ol' Reliant Center is hard to beat. I wonder though, when Lonestar returns to the Reliant in 2009 could it be a two field super-regional? It sure seems like Lonestar and the Reliant Center could handle it. Could it be???? Me hopes!

Reliant is absolutely capable of handling a super regional and the Lone Star Committee is more than ready to turn Lone Star into a super regional. Now here's the but, to have a super regional you have to have 80 teams. We had 52 teams this year so we know that with all our Lone Star teams out there recruiting teams and helping them find funding we could achieve super regional status. As of right now we are not planning a super regional but if our teams pull together and recruit enough teams I'm sure we could have a super regional in the not too distant future.

[Kymber]

Originally Posted by njamietech

I don't know how big the field for next year is going to be. but if the merrell center deal comes through i can tell you that the floor space is that of a high school basket ball court plus there are retractable stands that make it even bigger than that

also i got some questions regarding the merrell center's basic floor plan so i attached some files that contain the floor plan located below. I don't really know the dimensions of a high school basketball court in relation to the first fields so I can't really judge the possibilty of a super regional but mabey you can.

Attachment 5385

Attachment 5386

This venue is not large enough to accomodate a super regional nor are we ready for a super regional. We are REQUIRED to have 80 teams for a super regional and we will only be accomodating 45-50 teams maximum at this venue. This venue will NOT accomodate 80 teams and 2 fields. Once we return to Reliant in 2009 if everything comes together just perfectly, the committee has been able to raise the funds, and teams have recruited enough teams that we have 80 teams then we MIGHT have a super regional. This is a big job and will require everyone to work together and get the word about FIRST out.

[ChuckDickerson]

Kymber, this sounds encouraging that Lonestar might one day be a super regional. I know the Reliant Center can handle it if another section were opened up for a larger pit area. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn't the number of teams at a regional more of a limit imposed by FIRST rather than how many the regional can get to attend? I have always thought that FIRST specified a number of available slots and that was it. At least the FIRST regional registration webpage makes it appear that way to me. X number of slots - Y number of teams signed up = Z number of open slots. I would think that since there were 13 new rookie teams at Bayou this year just from Mississippi and Louisiana that by 2009 it would be very possible to make 80 teams at Lonestar. Lonestar is a great regional and since it is usually the last weekend I would think many teams would love to make it their 2nd or 3rd regional if FIRST would open up the slots. I can honestly see it happening and hope it does!

[Kymber]

Originally Posted by DeepWater

Kymber, this sounds encouraging that Lonestar might one day be a super regional. I know the Reliant Center can handle it if another section were opened up for a larger pit area. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn't the number of teams at a regional more of a limit imposed by FIRST rather than how many the regional can get to attend? I have always thought that FIRST specified a number of available slots and that was it. At least the FIRST regional registration webpage makes it appear that way to me. X number of slots - Y number of teams signed up = Z number of open slots. I would think that since there were 13 new rookie teams at Bayou this year just from Mississippi and Louisiana that by 2009 it would be very possible to make 80 teams at Lonestar. Lonestar is a great regional and since it is usually the last weekend I would think many teams would love to make it their 2nd or 3rd regional if FIRST would open up the slots. I can honestly see it happening and hope it does!

Actually the limit on many teams a regional can have register is set according to how many teams the venue can accomodate. We will have to expand the pit area but we do have the ability to do that.

[Tazlikesrobots]

Originally Posted by Kymber

Yes we are working with the Merrell Center to host the 2008 regional there nothing is finalized at this point and until we have a contract this is not official, but this is a ONE YEAR ONLY thing, we WILL be returning to Reliant in 2009. We had to find another venue for 2008 because Reliant will be hosting the Sweet Sixteen that year. We have an amazing venue with Reliant and they go out of their way to help us make this a great event for all the teams that attend. This year not only did they open up Hall D to us so that the teams could eat inside without having to sit in the rain, they also brought chairs down without us asking and at no cost to us. It is this type of consideration and the ablility to grow at this venue that keeps our regional at Reliant.
Until we have a contract there will be no decisions made on pit and field layouts so any thing that is said by anyone other than a regional or assistant regional director for Lone Star is not accurate information. We will inform the teams that are attending of all the information they will need as soon as we have details but as of right now nothing is set in stone.

I love the setup at Reliant Area. It is easy to get to and from the stands and everything is very close to the venue.

[Kevin Sevcik]

While I'm at it, I'd like to ask my customers' opinions on this encoding change I'm making. I'm uploading one of the newly encoded quarterfinals videos. It will be called tx_qf1m1alt.wmv. If you guys could compare it to the original tx_qf1m1.wmv file and PM me your preference, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to make sure I'm not making things worse. For those that have forgotten: SOAP Lone Star Archives

Encoding differences:
Original
Uses drop field deinterlacing. Moving objects have crisp borders, but we're basically dumping half the resolution by dropping every other line. Thus the blurry letters.

Alt
Uses blend deinterlacing. Moving objects have blurry borders. Interlaced fields are blended together preserving info and keeping detail in stationary objects, like the text.

Basically, I'm looking for if the motion blur is distracting or troublesome. looking around 1:45 in the vids is a good example.

Kevin S.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Okay, an update. I've got all the matches parsed and encoded or encoding. Unfortunately, SOAP has run out of quota. I'm taking down the huge awards vids since I wanted to chop those up anyways, but that'll only get me to about match 50. So y'all may have to wait until SOAP gets their hosting bumped up before you have the entire selection of matches.

TubaMorg,

If you still want those two matches, hit up my AIM around 1PM CDT or later and I'll try to send them to you that way.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Just a bit of cross-posting here as there might be more traffic on this thread
Any and all Texas FIRST teams need to inform their State legislators about an upcoming event happening in the basement of the Capitol building. Please visit this post to learn more
Texas Robot Exposition in the Capitol Building April 23rd - 27th.

[Tonya Scott 476]

Where are the awards videos posted? I think I read somewhere in this thread about that---but I can't find that information now that I am specifically looking for it.

Lone Star Rocked the House!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Tonya,

I've temporarily taken down the awards videos from SOAP. SOAP ran out of quota on their server, and teams were asking for qualifying matches. I'll repost the awards individually shortly after SOAP increases their quota and has room. As always, I have all this footage available at higher quality than on SOAP and would be more than willing to provide it to interested teams for the low, low price of enough DVD-Rs to burn the videos to and a self-addressed, stamped CD mailer. Interested teams can PM me for details and to make arrangements.