No power, but we pressed on. Hats off to our hosts 708 on making a lot of things happen in the face of a blizzard.
How are the pits with lights getting power? Battery powered lights? Or are you guys using a generator for pit power?
If nothing else this does give me a few ideas of things we can work on for our local district in case of a similar outage. It never even occurred to me that you could run an event without power (or that anyone’s ever had to), but now that I think about it, since we use a generator for pit power anyways, we potentially could run the field off of it too. Something to keep in mind in case we ever encounter a similar situation I guess. ::rtm::
They had a generator supplying power to the pits. Additionally, the school has a generator that powers emergency lighting.
The event has now been cancelled, however. While they had emergency lighting and pit power, there was no lighting in the main gymnasium (where the field was located). There’s no anticipated return of power in sight, so their hand has been forced and they cannot run the event. 
What’s the SOP for an event being cancelled? (If there is one)
How does that affect district rankings for those teams?
Here’s the email everyone got:
At this time we are still without power. We are not able to safely run the event at this time. We are forced to cancel the event, as we do not have an anticipated return of power.
We would like to provide all teams with the ability to pickup your robot if you have already brought it. We will turn the generator back on so that teams can safely pack-up their pit and re-bag their robot.
We would like to have all robots picked-up by 3 pm today. Please limit your pick-up team to no more than 5 individuals
Additional communications about rescheduling the event will follow from official MAR Channels. FIRST Mid-Atlantic will send an update as soon as alternate arrangements can be made.
So it sounds like they are trying to reschedule it? A rescheduled event will probably work for most teams, and then those who can’t make the new weekend can go to a different event. Hopefully something like that can work for everyone involved.
What happens to our 6 hours of out of bag time? If a team already used their 6 hours in anticipation of competing at Hatboro, will they get another 6 hours before their next completion or will those 6 hours that they used for Hatboro count as those?
I’m not quite sure there is even a precedent for this, so I imagine more information is to come. If anyone else knows about a district event being cancelled in the past please chime in.
I dont know of any district being cancelled, let alone one mid-season.
Going to chime in on this as its a safety issue: Most Schools have a generator installed to supply power to Life Safety systems and lighting with the intent to provide time to get everyone out of the building.
Putting a large number of people into a compromised building for a public event is not something that should be on the table.
Yes, it stinks that a large number of teams are in a bad position due to this, but the Safety of our teams is the first order of business (no pun intended)
There are no Mar events after week 4. It could be rescheduled then, but instead of the first Mar event, it would become the last one.
Yep, with DCMP in week 6 looks it’s like week 5. As MAR only has two fields that’s the most obvious option, if not maybe the only one.
Week 5 is Easter weekend. Many other events are scheduled on that weekend but it is done on Friday and Saturday. I wonder if any school or organization that prefers not to go Easter weekend can move into another event. Is there a strict maximum of 42 teams per event?
What’s the state of things in neighboring districts? It would be tough to staff a third event in a weekend if you could borrow from Chesapeake or NE or a regional truck, but if it’s that or nothing…
There’s a lot of work that goes into staffing 2 events per week, so maybe either a week 5 event or redistributing the teams to another event would be the best option rather than holding a third event in the next 3 weeks. Especially on such a short notice.
Week 5 is the only time that makes sense to me. Not only is there no third field for an event weeks 3 or 4, but teams may also have scheduling conflicts. It wouldn’t make sense to reschedule a team’s first district event at the same time as their second district event. Since there are no MAR events week 5, it’ll be easier for as many teams as possible to attend.
As mentioned, Week 5 is Easter weekend. That also means it’s spring break for many schools. Many students/families may already have spring break plans. And obviously many school districts will have issues with approving field trips for spring break. This is doubly true for the private Christian schools (2607, 5181, 3974) which typically have strict rules against competing on Easter weekend.
Doing 3 events in one weekend also wouldn’t really work, as there’s significant overlap between the teams attending Hatboro and the teams attending events in weeks 2, 3, and 4.
No obvious good solution to this…
Of the 35 Hatboro teams only 1 is signed up for 3 MAR districts (708), and 3 other teams (709, 2234, 2590) are signed up for external regionals (universal points system anyone?)
Remaining MAR Events for those 35 teams:
4 compete week 2
19 compete week 3
12 compete week 4
Guessing off of previous year caps - there’s some space for teams at the remaining MAR events, 35 teams worth of space would be difficult/maybe impossible. Additionally, you can’t pull more than 11 teams from the “Hatboro” event before it becomes too small to run a traditional elims bracket with 24 teams.
Based on historical high attendance:
Mount Olive can go +2 to 42 teams
Westtown can go +3 to 38 teams
Bridgewater can go +10 to 46 teams
SCH can go +4 to 34 teams (+6 if our NE visitors bow out)
That’s 21 slots. Seneca and Montgomery are near their traditional highs. So each of those events would need to squeeze another ~3 teams on top of that to fit all of the Hatboro teams.
What that could look like:
Mount Olive 44
Westtown 42
Bridgewater 44
SCH 36
Seneca 42
Montgomery 42
Crowded, but maybe not impossible?
More “entertaining” ideas
-HQ refunds some teams $2500 and doubles their district points from their second event.
-HQ counts points from external district events, and asks those teams to release their second MAR event
-HQ counts points from external regionals, and asks those teams to release their second MAR event
What’s been the past protocol for cancellations? I don’t recall one happening in the last few years in MAR. I can’t help but hope we get placed into Bridgewater as they’re just across town as opposed driving back down to Hatboro.
There… isn’t one.
This is the first official event of any type that I can recall being fully cancelled, particularly at this stage of the game. I believe there have been some weather-shortened events, in the past (Dallas last year or the year before, IIRC?), but no full cancellations when teams are already present.
The same sort of situation happened here in MAR, as well as in the same event… I remember in 2015 because of a Snow Storm on Sunday, Hatboro extended gameplay on Saturday, finishing all quals matches then. Then on Sunday, they started off with Alliance Selection, ending the event very early.