How Many Regionals Does Your Team Participate In?

[Armonious]

Just 1 regional here. Wish it were more, but we never were able to obtain enough funding. Have never been to the Championships.

Our problem generally seem like they could be almost entirely resolved if we attended a second regional. Usually, we build a really solid robot, in terms of functions, but seem to get caught up on something trifle. This year, it was drivetrain issues, but when those mecanums were in operation, our robot was a scoring machine.

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Considering there are only 5 weeks of regional events, I'd love to meet the teams who do 7+ regionals.

Me too! We usually do 2 or 3 regionals and championships.

Cass

[Vermeulen]

We only go to one regional, mostly because of financial reasons, and because of missing school. I've always wondered, though, how do teams that go to a lot of regionals and championships deal with missing so much school? It seems like it'd be a big deal to me.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Vermeulen

We only go to one regional, mostly because of financial reasons, and because of missing school. I've always wondered, though, how do teams that go to a lot of regionals and championships deal with missing so much school? It seems like it'd be a big deal to me.

We miss 6 days cause of robotics, and the administration is supportive as long as we keep it contained. Meaning like only 10ish students miss the 6 days, and not the fully 35.

[qhsscience]

Missing days from school is a big deal for us. As a result, we have done 2 regionals for years, one local and one travel (warm). We have done LA, Arizona and Florida for travel regionals and Boston ever since it began. We have done Atlanta once and Houston and even Disney years ago, but have found regionals to be the "right size" for competition. We have bantered about a third competition, but have always said no due to the extra days missed from school.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Vermeulen

...how do teams that go to a lot of regionals and championships deal with missing so much school?

I've heard of teams sending different crews to different regional events.

[efoote868]

My team usually does a week 1 regional (this year KC), then Boilermaker Regional (close to home).
If we get in to the championship event, we go to that.

Oh, and IRI in the summer. Guess that makes 4?

[delsaner]

We like to keep it at two regionals and championships (if we qualify). We would be missing too much school and it would be too much money to go to three or more, and then possibly championships on top of that.

[rsilverstein]

Originally Posted by Vermeulen

how do teams that go to a lot of regionals and championships deal with missing so much school? It seems like it'd be a big deal to me.

Our team is all seniors so by the time Robotics comes around we've all finished applying to colleges and are just about done with school. We also have a lot of support for our school's administration and teachers so they don't mind too much.

On that note, we go to 2 regionals a year and the Champs if we qualify.

[waialua359]

We do 3 regionals plus CMP. We would do all 5 if there was no such thing as missing school. I'd do a road trip with the kids for the entire season.
Instead, we do VEX in Japan in November, and Dallas in April for the World VEX championship. Hopefully IRI this summer.
If we do that, our robot will have traveled to the mainland from Hawaii roundtrip 3 times this season!

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Vermeulen

We only go to one regional, mostly because of financial reasons, and because of missing school. I've always wondered, though, how do teams that go to a lot of regionals and championships deal with missing so much school? It seems like it'd be a big deal to me.

All of the years I was in HS, except for my Freshman year we did three events total. Usually, this meant that we would miss anywhere between 2 and 6 days of school during the season, depending on when Regionals and the Championship landed.

One of the nice things about the regional structure is that only 2 of the 3 days are really important and of those 2, 1 is usually a Saturday. In years past when we had a larger team, or kids couldn't miss class as much, we would just take a select group of students Thursday and then take the entire team on Friday and Saturday, with the exception of New Jersey this year, which was a Friday, Saturday and Sunday event.

A trick that some teams do, and we've used in the past, is to go to an Event over spring break, which varies depending on the year.

[Dkt01]

1756 has always gone to only 1 regional, but we actually considered going to two this year. We may try to go to another in the future.