…thou shalt not go to 4 Competitions, 5 is right out!
I have heard that teams that are signed up for more than 3 competitions (not Chief Delphi, by the way, though I will admit that we would LIKE to go to more, but we just can’t) are being asked which one(s) they are dropping.
He called me last Sunday night to say that he had received an E-mail from the team and that they had been requested (read: told) by FIRST to drop one of the 4 events they were signed up for. This was to apply to any other teams who had also registered for 4 or more events. (more? jeez what a schedule!!)
WPI was scheduled to attend Virginia, Silicon Valley, UTC, and the Championship…
Our team leader was emailed a while back and asked “if you had to opt-out of one regional, which one would it be?” It was decided to we’d drop UTC and last week FIRST asked us to do so, due to the fact that there were 4 or 5 New England teams that hadn’t gotten into any competition…
It makes our schedule easier, but harder for us to bring more students to competitions…
I think that it may depend on the status of teams for certain regionals whether people are asked to drop them or not…
Ah well… it’s almost kickoff time :P… just 3 more weeks of term to get through
we are going to the Buckeye Regional, Motorola Regional and Nationals…i think that was decided as final…but i am not certain at this point…clark probably can confirm this
we’re planning on going to Buckeye, Chicago, and Nats. but we’re having hard enough trouble getting enough money to pay for our 1st entry fee not just 3. lets hope we find some $$CASHMONEY$$
*Originally posted by Ed Sparks *
**We were asked to drop one of our regionals…
We gave up KSC …
**
Hold the phone…I hope this was a request and not an order. There is nothing on the FIRST website that limits the number of regionals you can go to is there? I think if a team had enough tact it would not go overboard on the number of regionals but if a team decided to go to as many regionals as they wanted to there shouldn’t be a problem.
I’m not too surprised that FIRST asked teams to drop out… Just due to the sheer number of new teams in it this year, things are gonna get hectic and readjustments will be made each year… FIRST is still growing at an insane pace, and perhaps it will be detrimental to the development of other teams… Who knows…
If FIRST is going to limit the number of regionals/comps this year, how are teams expected to generate enough points for this years’, or even next years’ Championship? It seems as though multiple regional winning teams will grab all the points, and many other teams will be right on the fringe of qualifying. I don’t want to start the debate over qualifying again, but this rule further limits a team’s chance to qualify.
*Originally posted by Ben Piecuch *
**If FIRST is going to limit the number of regionals/comps this year, how are teams expected to generate enough points for this years’, or even next years’ Championship? It seems as though multiple regional winning teams will grab all the points, and many other teams will be right on the fringe of qualifying. I don’t want to start the debate over qualifying again, but this rule further limits a team’s chance to qualify.
BEN **
Of course, you have to keep in mind we don’t know what the formula will be for qualifying next year…they may change the number of points needed…
Could it be that FIRST is wanting to try to force us to “have a life” beyond FIRST during the January-April time frame. Their not allowing teams to participate in more than 2 regionals does at least a little to accomplish that.
Also, as may have been previously mentioned, not all that many teams are able to enter more than two regionals, and the limit would serve to equalize things to some extent. From our team’s experience, each regional is a major learning experience leading up to National, and while we have never entered more than two regionals, I suspect that if we did, we would continue to learn at the third (or fourth) regional as we do at the first two.
My impression is that FIRST is just trying to keep room available for teams.
I doubt that they actively wanted to limit teams to fewer than 4 events.
To me it seems pretty clear that it is just a numbers game. Given that they didn’t have slots for everyone that wanted to go to regionals, they had to cut back somewhere. The logical first place to start is to limit the number of competitions that a team can go to.