The Great Northern Regional Planning Committee just navigated an insanely challenging situation in the best way I can imagine.
There was a significant snow storm (8-12") timing out for the Friday/Saturday of the event. Teams were already loaded in, through practice day, and ready to go for Quals matches on Friday. Essentially it was business as usual.
In the morning on Friday, three teams made the decision to leave the event on Friday evening ahead of the worst part of the storm. I understand that 2 of those teams didn’t have a choice (their schools called and required that they leave), and the third team made the decision to leave on their own.
With quals matches already under way, and schedules locked, the RPC (with guidance from HQ) enabled the teams that were exiting the event to leave their robots behind to be driven by teams that were staying at the event. Two teams took this opportunity to help their alliance partners by leaving their robots behind so they could still field a full alliance. I think this was a graciously professional thing for those teams to do. The third team declined this option, and opted for their alliance partners to play 2v3 in their remaining matches.
It was declared that these robots wouldn’t be eligible for the playoffs which helped to avoid any addtional conflicts that could’ve arised from this situation.
Simultaneously, the RPC coordinated with local hotels, and the city of Grand Forks to ensure all teams would be able to find lodging for an extra day. To my knowledge this was completely successful and nobody was forced to drive in terrible weather.
I want to sincerely thank the RPC, and all of the event volunteers for their handling of this difficult situation. There were a lot of things they could’ve done differently which would’ve harmed the team experience at this event. Shortening the schedule by limiting the number of qualification matches was one item in particular that I’m happy we avoided.
The Great Northern Regional is consistently one of the best run FIRST events I’ve attended year after year. I strongly recommend it to anybody in search of a well run Regional event in 2024.