I had asked this question on the 2018 FRC Events thread, but I wanted to make it its own post to reach out to the broader community.
How has your experience been in attending back-to-back regionals (i.e. one that finishes on a Sunday and the next begins on a Wednesday)?
The responses I’ve seen have said “Exhausting,” which makes sense to me. However, we have two regionals that we really want to go to (Sacramento and SVR), and they happen to be back to back this year. Has the experience been manageable?
We did this last year going into district champs. All I can say is I would not want to do it again (given the choice that is). To answer your question, is it doable, absolutely. But plan on being exhausted by the end of the second regional. One thing that didn’t help in our case was our district event was a 2 day and not a 3 day. This made for even longer days, and virtually no sleep.
If you guys are really gung ho on doing the 2 events, go for it. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.
Point of order: Back-to-back generally refers to events that are on consecutive weekends, regardless of whether they’re T-F-S or F-S-S. (Or, if you’re in Israel or Australia, the same week.)
Bear in mind that I’m speaking as a (questionably-sane?) volunteer, not on behalf of my team. As far as I’m aware, none of my teams has done back-to-back regionals while I’ve been involved.
I have done back-to-backs multiple times. It’s tough. It’s manageable. But the key thing is to do a little advance planning. For instance: Your non-key members don’t need to be at both, do they? As another example: Where does your spring break fall with relation to those events? (Weeks 4-5 in this case) For some reason it would generally be a lot easier to do both if they were opposite weekends of said break, or even if only one was on it.
My back-to-back-(to-back) experience: Make sure you have time to do things like catch up at work/school, do laundry, stuff like that, and it’s a lot easier on you. I did it the last couple years by taking vacation on the shorter legs (in my case, it was only two extra days because I would have taken the Monday off anyways), but that may not be possible. Work ahead on the (school)work, sleep if you’re tired. Your health is worth more than this pesky robotics competition…
(You want to talk back-to-back… anybody else ever attend two different events on opposite sides of the country on consecutive days? Or did I just get certified as “definitely not quite sane”? :ahh:)
Team Tators did back to back this year (week 5 and week 6), although we got pretty lucky in that spring break coincided with our week 5 regional, and that regional was in our home town. Otherwise it would have been really rough to do back-to-back, and I wouldn’t recommend it
I along with 4613 did Shenzhen Regional March 9-11 followed by traveling Sunday to go to Australia for the Southern Cross Regional March 13-15 followed by South Pacific Regional March 16-18.
4613 had a rotating group of kids, so no one student was consistently away from class.
I have never been so sound asleep on a plane in my life.
Back on topic, it is possible with the proper planning. One of the main things would be for the kids to know what school work needs to be done and how to catch back up.
When I was in high school, my team went to three regionals. I liked it because I love competitions, and I loved improving. I thought I would miss this when I joined another team that only went to two.
Wow was I wrong. I didn’t realize how taxing the travel was, and how much a team could improve between two regionals. This made me realize that for me, it was more important to improve greatly between two competitions rather than compete in three at a smaller magnitude.
If your team has the funds (ie not sacrificing robot capabilities) this may be something you want to consider. It is more important to be sustainable in the long run.
192 has done back to back twice. The first time it wore out both mentors and it was hard for school work. Last year we had 3 mentors so I did both of the back to backs and the other mentors did one each I could do it because my wife is understanding and we made a vacation out of the travel time. We also brought the robot and pit in our Prius. It was still hard on school work. The first trip is a small group and the second is our travel trip for the whole team. Back to back are hard to do. The week before Sacramento is San Francisco and that would give you a week off.
Last year we did weeks 6 and 7 Regionals. We had serious schedule conflicts with a Music Program trip so we could only muster half the team for the first one. I think this spared wear and tear on the kids a bit…we basically had different Drive Teams at each event. The robot took a beating, but as we were not in the finals at our first event we had Sat afternoon to tune it up and bag it up. Mentors of course got worn down the most. Lots, and I mean LOTS, of experience gained doing this. Would not do it again.
T.Wolter
5826
People need a break for about a week to recharge, and if you want to make any design changes to your robot after a regional, 3 days is an almost impossible time frame to get everything designed and built.
We went to the Miami Valley and Pittsburgh back to back in 2017. We had to redesign our climber, and it was almost impossible to get our new climber parts manufactured within the time frame. We ended up getting it late Wednesday night and put it on Thursday morning.
Other than the time frame, people also get burned out and need to rest a bit. I loved every second of it, but some people were just exhausted by the first Friday of the second regional.
I would avoid it if it’s not a significant hardship to do so. It certainly can be done, but you will not have much if any time to iterate, and you will find your second event performance tends to suffer as drivers, etc. are fatigued.
If you are going to do it, I would highly recommend doing it Week 1&2, or Week 2&3, so at least you have 1 more event than the rest of your competitors at the second event. This advantage helps offset going back to back.
I’ve done back-to-back in 2009 and 2011. It’s survivable (and even winnable, in the latter case), but I don’t recommend it when alternatives exist. It is a significant load on the team and mentors.
I find it exhausting yet fun. I think attending as many regionals as you can exemplifies FIRST’s “Hardest fun you’ll ever have”. But I would still say make sure you plan. Getting your trailer/gear ready to go to the next regional is crucial, and make sure you have all of the things that went wrong in the first competition worked out so you are ready to to better. Whats the point in going to multiple regionals if you aren’t planning on improving, right?
My team did weeks 4, 6, and 9 last year, and found it difficult to keep up with homework. As a result, the earliest we’re going to do going forward is 3 week separation (like 2 and 5).
Of course, that only affects the team. It looks like I’ll be doing week 1 without them, then hopefully joining them for weeks 2 and 5 this year, and then a nice long break before Detroit.
Last year I did Field Reset Wed-Thur-Fri with my team at WPI, but skipped out Friday morn to drive to Field Super SE-Mass Fri-Sat-Sun. Stayed at hotels the entire time. Doing hotels instead of going home helped (SE-Mass is about 30 minutes away.) It is tiring but doable, and of course the next couple of weekends were more events. The 3-4 days at work at a desk job recharges the batteries enough.
My (armchair) world tour last year was China-Australia-Australia-Hawaii-Los Vegas, then in time for St Louis. I’m happy that someone did it, but I’m not sure I could have seriously pulled it off.
For my team, having a weekend in between, and trying to coordinate with the half-day holidays is much better.
As you mentioned, the Bay Area event schedule has to be the most inconvenient schedule we’ve had in years. [EDIT: Somehow I completely forgot about last year, thanks for the correction, Mike!]
Week 3 SFR
Week 4 Sacramento
Week 5 SVR
Most teams in the Bay Area typically go to two of those three events, however with this setup the only combination of these events that isn’t back to back is going to be SFR/SVR, and you can be assured that will likely fill up the quickest because nobody really wants back to back events. With SFR being smaller than SVR, it may be more prudent to sign up for SFR first and hope to get into SVR on your second round.
In terms of travel, the only other event in California you can look at is CVR, which I hear is possibly week 6, though since the event is going to be in a different venue this year I don’t know how many teams that will hold. A little birdie told me that getting into SoCal events is going to be extremely difficult this year if you’re not from the area, so your best bet is to try to stick with NorCal events or surrounding states if travel isn’t that much of an issue.
All in all, California’s impaction is really starting to show. 9 regional events just isn’t doing it anymore, and I don’t think adding a tenth next year will really solve anything if team growth continues the way it has, especially along the coasts. Until we get enough volunteers for districts, teams will just have to settle on inconvenient schedules or just a single event. It’s unfortunate, but that’s where we’re at right now.
CVR 2012, got stuck due to weather, got home on a redeye to Tampa around 7am Monday, went to work for 3 hours (had a meeting) went home and slept. Worked Tuesday and Wednesday then hopped on a plane to MAR CMP 2012 that night. Does that count?
This is the exact same schedule for those three events as last season.
It is pretty much impossible to play three times in California given the number of events vs number of teams. We managed it 2014-2016, but I think those days are over.
I realize that there’s a lot of California teams, and a lot of CA teams with lots of resources but how many actually go to 3 events a year?
This seems like it would not majorly impact a lot of teams. But maybe I’m wrong? (Take with a grain of salt from a dude who probably has no idea what he’s talking about)