FRC Blog - District Slot Allocations at 2015 FIRST Championship

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-District-Slot-Allocations-at-2015-FIRST-Championship

We have determined FIRST Championship allocations for Districts as noted in this blog.

The relevant portion of the blog is this –

*Districts will be getting the number of available Championship slots (total Championship capacity less the number of pre-qualified teams) proportional to their percentage representation in all FRC. As an example, if a District has 10% of the teams in FRC, they will be getting 10% of the available slots. This is similar to what was done last year, but this year, the allocation will be done on current season - 2015 - team counts. *
We informed Districts some time ago that we would be taking a ‘snapshot’ of registered FRC teams who had paid their registration fee, both at the District and overall FRC level, on December 9, to determine FIRST Championship allocations. We set this date for a few reasons. We wanted to encourage Districts to work with their teams and funding agencies to get payments in by this date to ensure teams would receive their kits at Kickoff and not have to pay the extra money required to have kits shipped individually. When kits are shipped individually, of course, teams receive them after Kickoff, which means lost time on top of the additional team expense. Also, we thought Districts and teams would be very interested in where they stood regarding their allocations, and wanted to get them the information as soon as we could after giving a reasonable time for payments to be received.

The results are below. You will note we have included two values for one of the necessary figures – how many FRC teams we will actually be hosting at the FIRST Championship. That information will be coming out shortly. Instead, we have given a range. Actual district allocations will fall within this range.


(Click to zoom)

The number of ‘available’ slots at Championship is the total number of slots available minus the 30 active pre-qualified teams. District allocation is determined by District percentage of the number of available slots at Championship, not the number of total slots. Pre-qualified teams do not count against the District allocation, so essentially the Districts will be sending their allocation plus their pre-qualified teams. The complete list of pre-qualified teams can be found here.

Frank





“We’re gonna need a bigger boat” - Michigan State Championship Planning Committee. :ahh:

540 is divisible by 6, but not 8.

<rumours> Two fields and 114 teams seems boat enough. </rumours>

The blog implies the number of teams at Championship will be between 540 and 600, not 540 or 600.

Indiana is getting a slightly smaller number of slots than last year.

Right, but you won’t have out of state teams competing with you. It will be exclusively Indiana teams.

Edit: Also, only 9 teams made champs from Indiana on merit last year. You guys should be even better represented this year. (45 pre-qualified).

Edit 2: looks like 868 got a wildcard slot at QC

There were 10 Indiana teams that attended championships last year:
447
868
5010
4982
1501
45
135
3147
3301
5188

45 is an original/sustaining team, so they don’t count against our quota.

If you look at it in a different light, if you combine the 2 regionals and their 12 qualification slots, but then eliminate the duplicate RCA, EI, and RAS (since the district will only have 1 of each), you get 9 unique spots. I had hoped for more slots, but the proportional representation seems fair.

This is more of an incentive to switch to districts in large areas.

For example, in MN we send a maximum of 24 teams to champs under the regional system. At each event we can qualify a Regional Chairman’s Award Winner, Engineering Inspiration Award Winner, the winning alliance and possibly a Rookie All-Star. 6*4 = 24.

Using the numbers that Frank posted and assuming that all the teams are paid for, we would advance 35/39 teams if we were in districts.

192/2989 = .06765
.06765570 = 38.56
.06765
510 = 34.5

Let me know if I did my math wrong.

The same was true of the New England District last year based on the number of slots generated by the regional events that were being replaced by the district. Growing pains.

Overall, separate from the ability of any particular team to make it to Championships, the NE district teams got a good deal more play time than in previous years for a lower cost. (We had a good year and ended up running in more than 120 matches!) That is a win.

Um, doesn’t this mean there’s probably going to be 6 divisions next year or is this old news? I know it was hinted at in the past. 600 in total vs 400 in total.

No one ever said there’s going to be 100 teams per division.

I still think they’re going to find a way to do 8 divisions of 65~75 teams. Less teams per division means more matches per team. Plus, it avoids making Einstein too complicated.

Yeah, that makes much more sense. Would make Champs a lot more interesting too.

Regardless, +1 to FIRST for adding a ton more slots. Awesome to grow with the population of teams!

9/400=0.0225
9/540=.01667
Thant’s more than a 25% reduction of slots for Indiana teams. I don’t see how this is anything but bad for Indiana teams. The field at Champs finally increases and we see zero benefit from it. I’m not real happy.

Your slots are now exclusive to Indiana teams, whereas previously they could go to teams from outside Indiana.

You’re lumping apples and oranges together. You switching to district allocation and the increase in champs size are unrelated.

Many regions aren’t getting any increase in champs slots with the increase from 400 to 600 (as they aren’t adding any regionals).

CA is sending 6 more teams this year, but the percentage is going down because of the increase.

I don’t think anyone in CA will complain though.

9 is the number of teams we had representing Indiana last year, with 3 regionals we had many more slots than that plus the regionals in Illinois and Ohio that were an easy drive for Indiana teams.

We actually only earned a few slots in-state:

at Crossroads
135 Finalist
5188 Finalist/RAS

at Purdue
5010 RAS
3301 Finalist
(135 had already qualified by that time)

The remainder came from regionals outside the state of Indiana. Since none of the remaining slots were guaranteed we are actually gaining slots

Both Indiana contests were loaded with out of state teams last year. Crossroads was brutal!

There were only 8 teams from Indiana that qualified for champs last year (868 didn’t qualify), that means at least one guaranteed extra slot with literally no chance of regressing.

In that case I sure bet that teams 16 and 340 are sure wondering who the second alliance captain on Newton was.