[FVC]: Longer competitions

[EricRobodox]

Why not have Friday as practice matches and the social. Next day start off early with qualifying and end it similar to how it is now. That way for teams who cant travel the distance and spend the night, though some areas its not an issue, they can at least show up for the qualification matches. It wont be completely fair, but I feel it would be a good alternative to make sure rankings are fair and the lowest budgeted teams have an equal chance to compete though they don't have the money to travel.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by EricRobodox

I think that a 2 day event would scare people away from competition. This is because they now need to deal with travel. One day is ok for there and back from competitions, even if its a few hours away. Though if you have it a 2 day event, you are talking about a lot of teams paying for travel expenses, to which Vex was made to be a cost effective way to introduce FIRST to new people. Having them pay for travel will scare them into coming and spending more money.

There were no FVC regional Championships any closer than 3-4 hours away from my team, (and I live in the densely-popluated southern end of the Boston-to-DC metropolitan corridor. This end of that corridor contains many FVC teams).

I bring this up, not to complain; but as evidence that there are probably many, many teams that put overnight travel into their plans from the time they first decide to become an official FIRST team. Without staying overnight in a hotel before the competition, we all would have been sleep-deprived at the start of the event and zombies by the end. I know other folks get up at 4:00 AM every day, but I'm not one of them...

Blake