FIRST Championship News and Reminders
Written by Frank Merrick.
FIRST Championship News
As you may have heard, we’re making some changes to FIRST Championship. See the info here. Rather than relocating to a different venue for the Einstein final matches, we will be playing them in the same place earlier matches are played. This means that FIRST Championship will be ending earlier than it has in recent years. We should be ending not later than 6 PM Saturday at both locations.
Also, we are eliminating the concept of subdivisions. You may have already picked up on this change in the Tournament section of the INFINITE RECHARGE rules. All named fields that were subdivisions last season are now divisions. And since we give out a full set of awards (excluding Chairman’s Award) at the division level, yep, we’re nearly doubling the number of teams that will be earning awards at Championship! With each division being about the same size as our very largest Regionals, we felt this was completely appropriate. Also, this more easily allows us to make another change – presenting the awards Friday night rather than Saturday morning. This frees up some time Saturday morning on what will be a jam-packed day. But don’t worry! Alliance selection will still be Saturday morning as it has been in the past, so you can still spend the time you need Friday night to prepare. Also happening Saturday – the three Chairman’s Award finalists and the winner from among those three will be announced.
We hope to see you at the 2020 FIRST Championship!
Reminders
Several key openings or deadlines coming up!
FIRST Choice open ordering starts at 12:00 PM (Noon) Eastern Time on Friday, January 17. Details can be found here. Keep in mind this is first-come-first-served!
Digital Animation Award sponsored by AutomationDirect.com is due 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, January 23. Details here.
Chairman’s Award and Woodie Flowers Award deadlines are 3:00 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, February 6. Learn more here.
Dean’s List Award deadline is 3:00 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, February 13. Check it out.
Best of luck to all teams submitting!
Frank
And here I thought that they’d announce where we’re going for 2021… Alas… The subdivision -> division change makes sense though given how difficult it was to earn awards at champs and the seemingly arbitrary division of lines.
I wonder if this is a cost cutting measure by FIRST?
I do like the idea of being done a little bit earlier in the evening.
I will say that I really liked the pomp and circumstance of watching the teams play in the Lions stadium
Seems a little overconfident there buddy, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
Couldn’t agree more. Ever since my first year in frc it struck me as wierd that they grouped two divisions together for awards. It also made me feel that a lot of deserving teams in one or the other division missed on awards that they should have gotten in addition to the teams in the other division that got that same award.
I’m happy about all these changes. The awards going between two subdivisions was always weird to me. Teams would win awards and you would have no idea who they were and why they deserved the award because you never saw them. I’m glad they are keeping all the events in one location will save time and also hopefully make things easier to watch at least in Houston.
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