Am I the only person that sees a problem with competitions on:
Good Friday?
Easter ( Spring Break ) week. Many teachers and students travel during this week. Often it is the senior trip time.
What do others think?
While the holiday issue is a valid one, FIRST can not control the calendar. Easter happened to fall into March this year.
Luckily, FIRST is finally to a stage where “most” of the country has more than one regional they can choose to attend - so any team which may have a conflict with one weekend can choose to go to a different event.
Teams have already said they don’t want the season extending into May for various reasons (AP tests, end of school year, etc…) and the season can not be moved up any sooner (Xmas, New years, etc…)
I actually know of a few teams who are happy they can choose a regional Easter week because they will lose less school time. The same situation can be effect everyone differently. A few years ago I would have agreed this was a big issue - but with FIRST providing 17 Regionals for teams to choose from, I think it works for all.
As a college student- I think holy days aren’t really our worry…
We’re more looking that we like to schedule regionals during our spring break… only 2 fall there, VA and FL, neither of which we would typically go to… And we had been looking to travel to a new regional, but who knows now!
The UTC regional we usually go to falls right during our midterm.
And Nationals happens during the last week of classes (i.e. the Monday and Tuesday after nats are our last days of class)
But we’ll just have to see what we can work out!
Well last year Nationals was on a holiday, a very important one for the jewish faith and i know lots of poeple couldnt go to nats cause of it, i thought that maybe first could try and figure ways around these types of problems but its really not thier fault.
Andrew
I think FIRST should reconsider the dates for the 3 regionals on Easter Weekend. There are two weeks before the Nationals that are vacated.
Our School Bob Jones High School rescheduled the Prom one year so that our seniors could attend the FIRST Nationals in Orlando. It just so happened that the date (rescheduled date) for the Prom was Good Friday. This made the USA Today and it wasn’t positive PR.
I don’t think FIRST needs nor wants negative publicity.
My vote is not to have any type of FIRST events on this Holiday, especially now when our Nation is in it’s hour of prayer.
Our team does have members that this would effect.
We would dearly love to go to St. Louis this year it’s the first time we have had a regional that isn’t 12 hours away from us, but it’s Easter weekend.