FRC Michigan events are a huge mess this season

Competition District Events
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This has been the worst season in my 9 years as a coach for registration and event placement. Below is a copy pasta of my first post on Reddit

FRC Michigan Event Registration has been a shambles

This year has been one of the most chaotic, confusing and bizarre competition registration I’ve gone through in my 9 years as a coach. After going back and forth with the state about what events are open, signing up for events with first national and now we have been given some random event 2 hours away while it was near the bottom half of our preferences. This means now instead of doing any of the metro Detroit or day trip possible events we need team money for hotels. This just added about 2k to our season cost because First Michigan waited til the last minute, ignored my questions for weeks and now decided you get what you get.

They opened up an event 30 minutes from our school two weeks ago. We asked to be added to it and instead we were told it filled up… How, it would be our home event if they’re wasn’t one 10 minutes closer. How did our team get passed over by supposedly 30 other teams who are closer. There’s no way and this really is among us have to decide if we only bring part of the team with us now.

Why. Why did we put in preferences with national well before November if you’re gonna throw it all out and redo it from a Google form 2 weeks after we paid out registration fee… So we can’t change our minds? This is awful and I really hope First will respond to my messages about this tomorrow and figure out a better solution.

Edit: The google form asked for preferences in order. Our home event was on this list so we put it last, then put 2 other events before this really far one. But still got this event. I understand we have alot of teams but then where is the registration money going if not to securing venues to hold the competitions in. But wait I hear you say why don’t teams just host more competitions. Well because the host team pays to rent the field, electronics, etc from first. So again where is the money going if not getting venues for the competitions each year. This should NOT be an issue especially after asking teams to pay an extra $1k this year to boot.

Further Edit: I just got told by another coach that looking at the dates for this weird event is running Saturday - Monday not the traditional Thursday - Saturday. Which means students will have to pick between going to church or going to competition if they choose to travel. How in the world did this happen? We have never ever as far as I know had a Sunday competition in First Robotics History. It’s not a typo either because they have the Lakeview 1 event the three days prior Thursday - Saturday so they expect the rest of the teams to show up on Friday for setup, do comp all weekend and go home Monday night missing school Monday (not a big deal cuz they’d miss Friday normally) but coming home on a school night after a late awards show… Good grief it just gets worse

End of the reddit post, but as you can see this is a complete mess. We have never as far as I can recall ever had an FRC competition in the US on a Sunday. Some of our team members come from a Christian School and I anticipate this being an issue for them. Lakeview the week 4 events are being split up to fit more teams it seems like which is why waitlisted teams ended up dumped here. But c’mon… A Sat-Mon and it’s a travel event and it’s the week before our home event week 5 so we have less time to fix anything that breaks by two days… Nice!

Edit for Future Readers: For people who are getting confused I’m attaching the Google form FIM teams who didn’t have a non-waitlisted second event had to fill out in the last few weeks. THIS form caused most of this mess, but there are other factors all the stuff below highlights on.

Screenshot_20221222_232835_Chrome
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I don’t know anything about the circumstances in Michigan this year or any other. Just popping in to say that in the Regional system, events on Sundays are normal. Generally, events are Fri-Sun (with Thu setup) or Thu-Sat (with Wed setup). Some people have religious conflicts on Sundays, but others have it on Saturdays. Multi-day events with high school students are hard to schedule when trying to balance all these factors with school, venue availability, volunteer availability, etc.

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All NC events are Friday-Sunday. Normally events finish up around 5-6 Sunday so that isn’t super unusual for down here anyways.

Edit: Meant to reply to OP

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Thank you for clarifying, Michigan events aren’t on Sunday usually but worlds and stuff isn’t either right? At least I don’t remember it being on a Sunday either time I went. Just another thing to deal with I guess.

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Yes event registration has been tricky this year. FiM now has to squeeze all of its district events into 5 weeks, 6 weeks was hard enough. Part of the way to solve that was adding lakeview 2 and Troy 2 as Sunday- Monday events with no tear down in between LV1 and T1. Sunday events have been in FiM for the past few years, typically Saturday Sunday events, however. I agree that Sunday events are not ideal and our team will not sign up for them, however, FiM has to do something to fit in more events. I hear your frustration and the home event system is tricky- but trust that the FiM team is awesome and all will come to fruition for a great season.

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The FIRST Championship ends on a Saturday night, but I’ve always assumed that was to accomodate for return travel, not religious obligations. The event ends well into the evening on Saturday. Most teams aren’t getting home till midday Sunday or later anyways.

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What events in FIM have been Sat-Sun in the last few years? Maybe we just luckily never had one before. Again I’ve been coaching 9 years and this is all news to me so it’s definitely not like a normal thing around here anyways. And I get FIM is doing it’s best but if they made it easier for schools to host events we’d have less overcrowding at the current events.

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Saline week 4.
Walled lake and Wood Haven week 6 last year.

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You seem oddly upset at events occurring on Sunday holy days for someone who seems very okay with events occurring on Saturday holy days.

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Because we have half of our team is coming from a religious school that has Sunday holy days. So it’s a big issue for a big part of the team

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Thank you! Definitely not events I ever went to or would be near

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As far as I know, the 3 events from 2022 that Cory mentioned are the only FIM events to ever have run Fri-Sat in all 12+ years of FIM, so for others in this thread, this is a change for FIM teams. (I’m aware other regions have run Fri-Sun events more regularly in the past.) My impression was that the Fri-Sun events last year were primarily schools with COVID-related (and other) concerns around having students and teams in the building simultaneously on Friday.

Lakeview 2 being Sat-Mon this year is also a first. As I understand it, the reason for this (as well as Troy 1 being Fri-Sun the same week) is that this is the start of spring break for a lot of Michigan schools. Not all, but enough that FIM could feasibly fill events that week on days that wouldn’t ordinarily work for teams.

The only other FIM event that isn’t Thurs-Sat this year is Wayne State, which was only recently added to the roster because FIM wound up with more teams than would fit in the originally scheduled events (in November, we had 24 events and more than 480 teams, so we needed another event). My guess is that FIM went with whatever venue they could find in that timeframe, and it was only available Fri-Sun.

(when I say “we”, that’s me speaking as a FIM coach, not in any official FIM-related capacity)

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And therefore it’s wrong to inconvenience you, but okay to inconvenience others?

I coach a team at a Catholic high school. We go to Sunday events all the time. The kids still turn out okay.

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I don’t think it’s right to inconvenience anyone really. Not sure where that’s coming from. I have an issue with how traditionally and for every year and event I’ve gone to it’s been Thursday setup, Friday - Saturday compete and then go home. Even worlds both times I went was Wednesday setup, Thursday -sat compete go home. So never had an event on a Sunday. Hence why it’s an issue now and an inconvenience. Why you’re mad at me for having an issue that means half of my team can’t go possibly is strange.

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I just want to jump in and vouch that FiM event registration has been an absolute mess this year, more than normal. Teams didn’t find out what second events they got into until the last week of November/First week of December.

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The issue from the perspective of this particular team is that the competition dates pose a problem for some team members. They didn’t say that no events should run on dates that conflict for their team members, just that their team wants an event that works for them.

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To add to this FIRST HQ changed champ locations for all of the Israel teams in 2019 due to a holiday if I recall.

The original poster is inconvenienced by many things, the Sunday event being one of those.

This should also give perspective of how good they have had it having so many events so close to them. Many FRC teams are not as lucky.

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Yes, it was Passover. But they wouldn’t make this exception for teams from Jewish schools in other countries. HQ’s stance at the time was that something is always a conflict for someone.

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Thank you! Also hey Anthony is Christian from 453. Yes this is exactly the form and setup I’m referring to. I spoke with Gail specifically about wanting WSU or Troy but instead we got Lakeview 2 in battle creek… Much farther than our typical venues…

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I found out our second event three days ago…