Back in October, we shared an update on advancement to the FIRST ® Championship from teams attending Regional Events. Today, we’re sharing an update on advancement to the FIRST Championship from teams who compete in the District model.
Each district is allocated a number of slots proportional to their population of teams. Each District determines the number of Dean’s List Award Finalists, FIRST Impact, Rookie All Star, and Engineering Inspiration Awards to present at their Championship, within a range established by FIRST. For the awards, ranges are developed by using ratios agreed upon by FIRST and District Leadership. These ranges allow each District to represent their own community as they see fit. The number of Woodie Flowers Finalist Awards is determined by the Woodie Flowers Award committee. The specific number of each award at each District Championship is also posted on the Championship Eligibility page. District representation at the 2024 FIRST Championship will be:
District
Championship Slots Allocated
FIRST Impact Award
Engineering Inspiration Award
Rookie All Star Award
Dean’s List Award Finalists
Woodie Flowers Finalist Award
FIRST Chesapeake
17
1
1
1
2
2
FIRST in Michigan
86
5
1
2
14
3
FIRST Mid-Atlantic
22
2
2
1
4
2
FIRST Indiana Robotics
11
1
1
1
2
1
New England
31
3
2
1
5
2
Ontario
23
3
1
1
4
2
FIRST in Texas
29
2
2
2
5
2
FIRST Israel
11
1
1
1
2
1
FIRST North Carolina
13
1
2
2
2
1
Pacific Northwest
22
2
1
2
4
2
Peachtree
16
2
2
2
3
1
The following teams competing in the District model earn a Merit-Based Qualifying slot:
Now we have the other side of the equation. The reduction of championship size results in:
Districts going from 283 to 281.
Regionals/HoF/Auto-Qualifiers going from 341 to 319
Edit: Before the pitchforks come out from regional teams, you’d probably need to look at the % of teams that qualify from each competition model for 2023 and 2024. While regionals lost more teams advancing, it’s possible districts increased their team count more than regionals. So the advancement rate may be similar.
Note that 2023 representation can be off due to late-registering teams. Which I suspect FIM and NE had a few of, thus the underrepresentation. If a team registers today, they wouldn’t have been included in the math about 2024 CMP representation.
Are you counting 4 bids from regionals this year?
Cause that number seems to high.
By my count there’s 63 regionals, each send 4 - meaning 252 + the auto qualifiers is probably around 275 range. Don’t have the exact numbers off hand.
I’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor keep my pitchfork out until they give us a universal points model. The regional champs qualification situation is so demoralizing right now.
No, the 319 is the total number of teams (600) minus district teams (281).
The big unknown when FIRST announced the (slightly) smaller championship and the changes to the regional advancement was the size of the priority waitlist (which is entirely made up of regional and Hof and Original/Sustaining teams). Now, we know that will be ~35 teams. So, while regionals lost 63 auto-qualifiers, they gained ~35 spots from the priority waitlist.
600 teams at Championship
-32 pre-qualified teams
-281 district teams qualifying
=287 slots for teams qualifying through regionals or the priority waitlist
Breaking it down, it’s:
63 regionals * 4 teams qualifying/regional = 252 teams qualifying directly
and
35 through the priority and open waitlists
Pre-qualifying
I have mixed feelings about including this in the main analysis, as it’s merit-based, but external to the season results. That said, if you include pre-qualifying, that’s up to 307 regional teams who can qualify without districts giving up slots.
Of the pre-qualifying teams, the breakdown is:
regional - 20
district - 12
27 FIM
359 regional
503 FIM
597 regional
987 regional
1114 ONT
1538 regional
1629 FMA
1816 regional
1902 regional
2614 regional
2834 FIM
3132 regional
4613 regional
It is crazy to me that this idea hasn’t been done yet by FIRST. However, I amAndyMark curious on how a universal points model would be structured and what issues would come with it.
So, if I amAndyMark reading this correctly, there will be roughly half a waitlist slot available per regional event after the 4 guaranteed slots. Right?
Data including prequalifying teams. Regionals just a smidge under-represented in the end, but seems a little unfair to change allocations based on where prequalifying teams come from.
PNW seems to have a discrepancy between this page and the blog post, with the blog listing 2 impact slots and the Eligibility page listing 4 impact slots. This is likely a mixup with the DL Finalist number, which has been swapped to 2 from 4 on the criteria page (along with having all awards in a different order from the blog post?)