Is There a unofficial west michigan tournament?
If so who do runs it?
west michigan tournament? do you mean regional because there is the west michigan regional every year.
Do you mean the Kettering Kickoff ?
Possibly I think he means something along the lines of Sweet Repeat or Indiana Robotics Invitational…
xxlshortys: can you please elaborate on what you mean?
For at least 5 years there was a West Michigan Invitational hosted by the local teams and the SME chapter. It was originally held at Westshore Mall, then Zeeland High School, then Grandville. (I know I attended four and missed at least one.) For these last three years the West Michigan Regional has taken the efforts of many of the same people and many more to put on, so the Invitational has stopped.
However, there have been discussions among the teams about getting together at some point to work together. This may include demonstrations for potential new teams and sponsors, sharing ideas to improve our teams, attending events to publicize FIRST, etc. One example of this is the yearly float in the Tullip Time Parade. We also have taken our robots to the Governor’s conference on education, the Intermediate School Districts, professional society meetings, etc. We’ll try and invite you to as many of these as seems practical.
I think all of us like to see continued growth. There are far too many schools without teams here, notably Muskegon, Grand Haven, Jenison, Hudsonville, Fruitport, and many others.
Im talking like an invitational.
I agree to the fact that there are way too many bigger schools in the area (notably Muskegon, Grand Haven, and Reeths Puffer but Reeths puffer had a team this past season but they dropped out for unknown reasons) and i would like to see them have teams, to help with more west michigan teams to compete against the east michigan teams.
I also noticed some teams had patches that represented their state. Now im not really one for getting a Michigan Robotics patch because of the size of teams in Michigan, but maybe a west michigan patch would be cool. Something to think about. But yeah Athena is gonna sit around and demonstrate at a few parades but other than that im pretty sure Sigma Squared wouldnt mind having the chance to test her out to all the other bots in the local area, we want the tough bot title lol.
it would be nice to at least organize multiple teams for events such as FIRST sponsorships, school recruitment, or community involvement. Multiple robots is always better than one robot. I’ll bring it up with pimp master Al (the project leader:] ) and see what he thinks cause we want to get our name out to the local teams so we can get together any time theres possibilities etc.