Does anyone know if competition schedules are posted before the competition? A student on my team said they were but we were unable to find the schedule.
go to www.usfirst.org, then check out the regional events page. Each event should have an agenda linked to, in PDF format.
Cory
Yeah. I found that. What I was talking about was the match schedules. Who is paired up with who and all that good stuff.
Do they release that before the competition?
Ahh, sorry I misunderstood your question.
They will not release the list of matches until Thursday morning when teams receive their registration packets.
Cory
In any case…it’s relatively safe to ignore the schedules.
I’ve only been in FIRST for a year now, but I’ve never been to a competition that was on schedule. Heck, even the offseason competition I went to (at Kettering University) ended up about an hour behind schedule. If you follow the scheduled times, odds are you’ll be showing up early. 
I was just hoping to get a hold of a match schedule to organize scouting…
At STL this year we ran anywhere from right on schedule to 15 minutes ahead – never behind – during Thursday practice and Friday/Saturday qualifying. We did start to run behind schedule during Saturday eliminations when one of the quarterfinals required five matches to decide the winner.
Also, we have never released practice or qualifying match schedules in advance. Practice schedules are distributed at registration on Thursday morning and qualifying schedules are distributed at the pit administration table on Friday morning.
Guys, he asked whether or not they release the match lists, so let’s not turn this into a thread about whethere FIRST was on time with matches or not. Start a new thread if you really feel a burning desire to do so.
Cory
What’s the fun of competition if you know everything ahead of time?
I remember back at 2001, to prevent teams from knowing who they are going to work with, FIRST had a match list that shows blocks of 12 teams in a 3 match period instead of showing which 4 team will be in which match.
You should be grateful about getting an accurate match list on Friday morning.
Organize your scouting team ahead of time, make sure there is enough scouting sheets and office supplies for all your scouts, and assign them which teams to watch ahead of time with the team list. As soon as you get a copy of the match list Friday morning when you go in (you will receive 2 per team I believe), have the scouts come to you to find the match # of the team they are supposed to watch. That way there will be no surprises.
The other match list should remain with the coach to figure out how much time they have for repairs and preperation before their next match.
Also, it is a good idea to bring a small dry marker board with you, and list out the matches you team is going to be in. Write down your alliance partner and your opponents, so you know what scouting info you are going to give your coach when your teams have have a match.
Good luck!
Just for fun…
Could someone speculate as to how many matches a team might go through on a given day?
6 on friday and another 3 or 4 on saturday in qualifing matches. If you go into elims it can range from 1 to 8 (really an infinite amount of) matches.
Just for fun ;-).
Say there are 36 teams at your event. On average, it should take about 5-6 mins for a match to finish, reset, and be ready for the next one. Lets say 6 mins per match cycle. Now, it takes 4 teams to play one match, that means in order for every team to play 1 match per team, it takes 36/4 = 9 matches. 9 matches with 6 mins match cycle means it takes 54 mins in order for every team to play 1 match.
Now, Friday the matches probably goes from 9:15am - 12:00noon, and 12:30pm - 5:00pm. Then on Saturday from 9:15am to 12:00noon. Thats about 10 hours. Given it takes about an hour (54mins) for every team to play 1 match, 10 hours should give about 10 matches per team.
But that’s because we only have 36 teams, and each match takes 6 mins. I remembered at bigger regionals, there could be as little as 7 matches per team. It all depends on how long it take to run matches.
Hey, you said just for fun ;-).
at SVR, which usually has around 50 teams or so, there have been 7-9 rounds the past few years.
At Sacramento last year, there were only 27 teams, and we had an astonishing 14 qualifying matches (That’s almost 2 regionals worth!) and something ridiculous like 6 or 7 practice matches. The only bad thing was you would almost literally finish a match, then get back into the que for your next one.
Cory
In answer to the original question:
Practice round schedules will be waiting for you thursday morning at your pit or something. Qualifying round schedules won’t be available until Friday morning.
This is because the rounds aren’t even generated until Thursday night when most teams have arrived, checked in, and been inspected. This reduces the chance of having complete no-show teams in rounds, since by then officials will know if all the teams will be competing.