I know approximately 400 teams will be at each championship, aka SuperRegional. Divided by 6 fields means 66.667 teams on each field. I would expect the same number of teams on each field, meaning 67 on each, totaling 402.
With 67 teams on a field, how many matches are we expecting total?
The past couple of years there has been 10 matches for each team, giving a couple teams surrogate matches.
Coming from a district where we get 12 matches, I did the math. at 10 matches each, that means 112 matches with 2 surrogates. With 11 matches each, that means 123 matches with 1 surrogate. Finally with 12 matches each, we get exactly 134 matches. 12 is such a nice number because it divides by 6 perfectly.
Looking at the past couple years, 123 seems most plausible with only having matches Thursday and Friday. I just hate surrogate matches a lot. 134 matches seems doable though.
Any other opinions on the matter? I know in previous years, they have sometimes released preliminary schedules.
The issue is that means a different number of matches total on different fields. I would assume they would want to max out time. The time in matches should be close to the same on each field. Having 2 more matches on one field can mean 15 to 20 minutes different. could be done, but would be weird if some fields have no surrogates and some do.
I had vaguely remembered that different-sized divisions happened at some points in the past so I started looking at division sizes beginning in 2007, my freshman year. It looks like 2008 had divisions of differing sizes:
Archimedes 85 teams 100 matches
Curie 84 teams 98 matches
Galileo 86 teams 101 matches
Newton 85 teams 100 matches
What’s weird about that year is that there was no need to have divisions of differing sizes. If one team was moved from Galileo to Curie, the divisions would be even. Perhaps this was an issue with late cancellations.
Anyway, it looks like the FRC Championship has dealt with divisions of differing sizes in the past. Perhaps this means they’d consider it this year.