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Another, under-appreciated benefit to district events: With 12 qualifying matches being played instead of ~8, it’s more likely that the most deserving teams will be in picking positions. A larger sample size will help ensure that the best teams end in their rightful position.
With the exponential growth of FIRST in Minnesota, I would be surprised to see them stick with regionals for much longer.
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This is a great way of explaining districts in general, not just Minnesota. How would the math work out for California - as in, how many district events would there likely be and how many teams would qualify for district and world champs?
The readout from FIRST that I can see shows 258 registered teams in the state of California. Mark McLeod, the spreadsheet whisperer, might have a more accurate number.
Standard district event size is at 40 teams. Some of the small single state districts like North Carolina lean towards 32 team events, but this would definitely not apply to California.
Each team is required to get a spot at two unique events in a district system format. That means there must be a minimum of 516 spots. At a clip 40 teams per event, you would need 13 events. If California transitioned any later than next year, a requirement for 14 events would be all but assured. The state championship would be a 15th event.
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That’s a remarkably one-sided view of a switch to districts. I wonder how much experience the person who put it together has with what the impact is on those organizing and running the events, as opposed to what the teams see.
I feel like the people of Minnesota are very in tune to the other side.
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I mean as a strategic communicator I learn how to write a message for a particular audience. If the audience for this specific message was potential planners and people who would be involved in moving Minnesota to districts the message would be different. I’m focused on the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) and for our specific audience our particular message worked well. We were trying to educate teams about what districts would do for teams.
Once again this was to educate teams, if in the future people want to change to districts in Minnesota that’s great! But I think the message was pretty spot on for the target audience.
In addition to what Jess said, if teams asked about some of the more behind-the-scenes details, I answered them to the best of my ability. I have not personally been involved in organizing or running a district event; however, I am aware of a fair number of the details from my time in FIRST in Michigan.
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While I agree that having the 12 matches is great for getting better ranking results, one important thing to keep in mind is that playing 12 matches played over ~1.5 days with 40 teams is usually a much more grueling pace than teams that attend regionals are used to. I think the biggest break in scheduled matches we had this year was like 30 minutes (any longer was due to field issues) but most matches we played were within less than 10 minutes of each other making robot maintenance much more problematic if you have any major issues.
Not sure if anyone here can speak to this, but does anyone know if MN plans to still have scheduled practice matches like regionals do (curious due to the last part of the 3rd paragraph)? One of the things I liked about how practice matches are handled in FiM events it’s all first-come first-serve, so if you have a robot that’s ready to go, you can get back into the end of the queue and keep practicing, and if you’re a team that’s robot isn’t ready right when practice matches start, you can still squeeze a few in at the end of the night without worrying about missing scheduled practices.
Trust me, less than 40 is even worse. At IN DCMP 2015 (32 teams), every team got 13 matches, and 5188 was one of the (un)lucky teams to get a surrogate match on top of that. We had 7 gaps between matches that were 3 matches or shorter.
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This flyer is awesome. I did not get a chance to see it while at the venue yeaterday. I plan on stealing this and using it in my push for Wisconsin.
I know everyone keeps talking about volunteer needs for a switch to district but the focus needs to be on the teams. Minnesota grew too big too fast to the detriment of all teams in Minnesota. Minnesota should have been the 2nd region to move to districts. Now they are in the no-mans zone of not knowing which direction to go.
Again growth for the sake of growth is a detriment to all teams in FRC and Minnesota is showing us all how true that is.
I know the RPC in Minnesota has all the best intentions and wants whats best for those teams in MN but it has come to make the jump and learn as they go before they’re in a place that when they switch they need 20+ districts…
Could you expand on that statement? I’ve seen no indication of FRC in Minnesota “growing for the sake of growth”, rather it’s been quite organic.
Minnesota grew so fast that the support for all those teams to truly be successful couldn’t possibly be there.
If you think throwing $ at teams and then watching them routinely flounder to pass inspection or even field a robot that moves is beneficial to the kids on their team or the kids on other teams your wrong.
Quality sustainable growth is what benefits all. Quantity growth is not.
We all want every high school student to have the possibility to be on an FRC team should they want it, but that doesn’t mean we start a team at every school because the money and sponsorship is there, when the support to truly run a successful* team isnt.
*I do not equate winning with success but I can say that nothing inspires more than winning. I can also say that watching your robot not move or score points for 2 days straight doesn’t inspire either.
While this was certainly an issue in the first year of districts in New England, it hasn’t felt like it was such a grueling pace these past two years.
In any case, teams should be prepared for quick turnarounds because that’s the reality of the elimination rounds.
It certainly isn’t a black and white comparison. Regionals and Districts have their benefits. I was just highlighting a benefit that isn’t as obvious as cost per match.
What Eric said is exactly correct, at least in my opinion.
I work with multiple MN teams via email and over the phone throughout the season to provide remote support. Too often, teams were created with money but no outside mentor support. Essentially, when you talk to a principal/district official and say you have $5,000+ to start a FRC team in their school and it is an amazing experience for students, who is going to say no? All they need to do is find a teacher to officially be coach and the administrator/district official can be the alternate contact. You then have a teacher coaching a team who potentially has no engineering background. I can speak from experience that this happens, I’ve worked with multiple teachers who have had close to zero computer experience. I have no issue being tech support for teams and I love to help but what we’ve done is almost a disservice to these students. My favorite example is a 3rd year team that had 5 students and 1 mentor. I worked with the mentor for two weeks over the phone and email to get labview up and running and their electronics connected correctly. I know how amazing this program can be; it inspired me, but in this case we were not inspiring these students. We threw $5,000 at a team ($1,000/student) that struggled to get even the basics done and that makes me incredibly sad inside.
Wiscosin just passed a bill that will throw money at teams and I’m fearful that Wiscosin will have this same problem. Especially because the RPC in Wiscosin has the flawed* view that we need more teams before we switch to districts.
*North Carolina and Indiana has proved this thought false.
Well why are you doing that then?
The state of Minnesota does not have grants to new teams. At least not that I’ve heard of. I know that Michigan and Iowa give (or gave) grants to teams but if Minnesota doesn’t.
I go to MNFIRST.org and I see a button to donate, but I don’t see any “free money for teams” verbiage.
So I ask again, explain how Minnesota is encouraging growth for the sake of growth?
The small single state district format is also in GA. I assume it is working there as well. I will attest to the primary reason that the single state district systems work is because they have a very great backbone of teams that pulls it all together. NC had a lot of teams volunteer to pull triple duty so they could get the system to work the way they wanted. We were VERY impressed and felt very welcomed in North Carolina because they have a lot of people that “get it”.
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My old team (2220) was started because somebody in our city saw that a company was offering grants to start an FRC team. He basically said he’d start one at Eagan High School and then told the school administration they had a new FRC team. From what I’ve heard of the team’s early years, it’s somewhat impressive that the team even came back for a second year, much less have gone on to become the impressive team they are now.
The team I currently mentor, 2667, exists because of a single sponsor. Despite having almost no communication with them last year and no idea that they planned to continue sponsoring the team (something that we tried very hard to correct), they paid for our fee this year. We did not know if we would be able to compete until that check came, completely unexpectedly, in the mail.
These are not isolated cases. There is a pattern here. Many teams here are constantly on the edge of disappearing, and don’t have the resources or knowledge to effectively teach or inspire students.
Yesterday, I was talking with 2220’s old faculty adviser, and he told me that going to the Wisconsin regional back in 2007 is the only reason the team came back for another season. I have to imagine that there are a number of teams that are perpetually in that situation.
Perhaps he’s referencing the grant money available from FIRST or somewhere else.