So this year in Wisconsin, there are 2 regionals close to us. Typically we go to one thats local and one we have to travel for, usually a few weeks apart. This year, we’ve already chosen one local regional in week 6. The other is in week 5, and is during our spring break which means decreased attendance from team members. We save a LOT of money by not traveling though. Which would you all choose? Going to a further away regional in an earlier week to get more time to iterate? Or saving money by going to the closer one that leaves us with little time for change?
(P.S we’ve never really struggled that much to gain enough funding to travel, though we did dip slightly into the negatives last gear)
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I would strongly advice against doing a back to back. Students and mentors will get tired. (Burnout is a real thing, even if it’s spring break) Additionally, unless your team dedicates time in weeks 1-4 to high quality drive practice, then doing 5 and 6 back to back is especially risky. You’ll most likely be going up against teams that have more experience from earlier in the season, meaning that their driving is more refined and they simply have that slight edge over everyone else. Not to mention that there’s simply not enough time to fix major issues on the bot between weeks.
Bottom line, I think going to an earlier regional is worth it.
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We can’t afford to travel and plan to do back to back. Specifically at both Wisconsin 5 and 6
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@mtareen I’ll second this and add that any modifications or major system repairs get crunched in a back to back. Or programming changes like a new auto.
Try to avoid it if you can. I only volunteer competition weekends, and am there occasionally cheering as a parent and ai get worn out from the emotion on time on my feet. Cant imagine the emotional drain on the kids.
Is there room at Seven Rivers? That’s our plan, weeks 4 and 6. I think Phantom lakes will always be Mukwonago’s spring break. That may hurt their attendance. So hopefully they can get Wisconsin earlier in the season for teams that want to do both. 3 in 90 miles was really tempting before the two home ones were back to back and Midwest was week 5 as well.
Every team I know who’s done back to back regionals has said never again. You finish on Saturday, then you have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to get ready to show up at the next one on Wednesday which isn’t even enough time to repair the damage done to the robot much less design and implement upgrades.
It can be done, but most teams regret the decision.
(Understand that the Duluth regionals are week 1 and typically Grand Forks is week 2, so there are a lot of northern MN teams who have tried to do both.)
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Earlier events = less time to work on robot; usually lower difficulty in opponents.
Later events = more time to work on robot; usually higher difficulty in opponents.
Take your tradeoff.
If you have a semi advanced auton, you can generally be the top of the competition at week 1 or 2. Just dont go to california.
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One of the most difficult things to do in FRC is back to back regionals. We are a very good team and have balked a few times when it comes to back to back regionals. Kudos to FRC 359 and Glenn for what they have done - and done so quite successfully.
However, if you were to do back to back, weeks five and six are the probably the best to manage in terms of the robot. By then the team can test out all aspects, find the failures, mitigate them, build spares, and then compete.
It doesn’t give a lot of time for planning for champs, but if you already know your place of concern/detriment, planning should be in place.
As for time to iterate - competing in week 4 and then week 6 doesn’t really give you time to iterate - only time to breath and collect your bearings.
This is the state of affairs for so many teams in the Upper Midwest for 2025.
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Back-to-back regionals are never an ideal situation. Recapping what people in this thread have already said, it’s less time to fix your robot and its physically daunting on the team. Weeks 5/6 especially, since by then the most optimal strategies for the game are more or less set in place (at least from what I’ve seen throughout my time in FRC). It’s a gamble to take when you pick early vs. late regionals when it comes to strategies and whatnot.
I would say, give your team at least a week’s buffer for regionals, a week and a half to 2 weeks if you plan to travel decently far. Ideally, a week 3 regional works best from what I understand (note: I am not from the Midwest region and not familiar with the current state of Midwest teams).
Doing two regionals back to back, as others here have said, generally isn’t advised. Even if you can afford to do it, it can sometimes be stressful for the team and will only allow for a small window that can be used for any technical issues the robot may be experiencing. Doing the earlier one seems to be the better option here.
I would advise against doing back to back comps. People will be exhausted going into the second comp, and you also need time to fix/improve the robot between comps find a regional within reasonable travel distance of you that isn’t week 5 and shoot for that. Being that you are in Wisconsin, I’d recommend seven rivers or Central Illinois (both in week 4)
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Back to backs are tough and I generally try to avoid them. We did back to back Weeks 5 and 6 in 2023. It worked out well for us (we qualified week 6 as finalist alliance captains), but it was tough on the team. Our robot was in good shape, but our entire team got sick after our week 5 event, so we were pretty miserable during the week 6. Everyone on the team was loading up on cough drops and cold meds throughout. Some recovery days/robot repair days make a big difference if you can schedule it that way.
Ideally, I would try to avoid back-to-backs. Last year we went to Wisco W3 and Iowa W4 because we were trying to get as many students as possible to go to both competitions. We are a community-based team with at least 6 different high schools, so we have at least 3 spring breaks. During the gap, we had two meetings to make a single change to our vision. We wanted to add an amp mechanism, but that turnaround was impossible for us. More or less, the robot is about the same for the 2 events. Last year, we considered our week 0 event at Eagan as our first event and iterated from there.
We get a hotel for any regional that more than a hour away. We signed up for 7rr and are hoping for Wisco. There’s a few week 6 around us, so we should get one. I also know the week 6s around us are competitive to get into, so we will see what we get.
Going to Week 5 & Week 6 is not a bad idea because both could be considered “home” regionals that don’t need hotels for your team. There might be a larger gap than what we had with the shorter 2.5 event at Phantom and the Thursday - Sunday schedule at Wisco. Families would also miss less work and school if people choose to skip practice day at Wisco. Both sides have pluses and draw backs for your team.
Hopefully next year Wisconsin has events 2, 4, and 6.
We’ve done back to back district events in 2014 and 2024 (and where both were the closest, but still multi hour drives and hotel stay trips), and chose to avoid it in 2020. While it’s definitely not a lot of turnaround time, things went pretty well for us both times so it’s not the worst option.
Though both times were early to mid season and not weeks 5+6 for what it’s worth.
This is true if your main focus is to maximize robot build and revisions, to try to win an event. Unfortunately, for many programs, they do back to back to actually save on costs and much easier to logistically plan.
I can think of several Hawaii teams that do this, and 4481 comes to mind.
Teams that drive to and from events, sure, you want all the time you can get to work on your robot before your first event, between events, and before Champs if you qualify.
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When Long Island had 2 events in one week you had many teams doing 6 straight days of regional. I did it once, and it was alot. 7 days (field build) of a 3 day regional is a slog, I had many years of pushing myself a lot with frc, but it was asking a lot of the kids for sure. I think if we didn’t get the wildcard at LI1 it may have really been a drain on the kids for LI2.
I’ve also done back to back events once, and it’s a pain to go to the event, get back unpack, try to make changes, pack and go back out.
Unfortunately if it’s the only choice based on regionals, or finances it happens.
I’d rather have atleast a 7-10 gap between ending one regional and attending another. Allow kids a day or 2 or catch up with school, unwind, and figure next steps. Plus you have some time to potentially make changes.
I haven’t looked so far as to the expo center event calender for 26, to compare that to what week Spring break is for Mukwonago. But that would be amazing. I also know there will still be a push for an event in the northeastern part of the state. If there’s enough interest in Phantom Lakes, I’m hopeful they can find a weekend the Resch Center or Oshkosh Arena to host it, so spring break isn’t the same concern as if they put it at a high school.
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FIRST WI and the WI RPCs are well aware that a week 4,5,6 schedule was not ideal for WI teams and will be working to rectify that in the coming years.
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At least for Phantom → Wisconsin, you get an extra day or 2 as Phantom ends Saturday, and Wisconsin is in theory the robot wouldn’t need to arrive until Friday (Wisconsin is Thurs-Sun).
Also with students being gone for spring break, the amount of work that is able to be done might be similar between week 4 to 6 vs 5 to 6. So the decision might be a wash.
We were debating between a week 4 or Phantom week 5. The deciding factor for us is most of our core students are going on a trip with the music department, so it would be a struggle to manage that.
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We did back to back in 2023 and while I’d not say never again, it would really have to be our only option to attend two events in a season to consider it.
This is definitely a tricky decision, but based on my experience, I’d lean towards attending the farther regional earlier in the season. The extra time to iterate between competitions can be a game-changer, especially if your team is still refining parts of the robot or strategy. Competing early gives you a real-world test of the robot, which can surface issues you didn’t see during build season. Plus, it gives you several weeks to make improvements before your week 6 event. That iteration time can make a huge difference, especially when it comes to reliability and fine-tuning your systems. The more time you have to tweak, the better the chances that your robot will perform well when it matters most.
Now, I get that decreased attendance during spring break is a concern, and that’s something you shouldn’t overlook. You’ll want to make sure that the key members who are critical to your robot’s success can attend that regional. If your team can operate smoothly with a smaller group and still manage pit work, repairs, and match prep, then I think it’s a risk worth taking. You might also think about splitting up roles or cross-training members ahead of time, so if certain people can’t attend, others can step in seamlessly. It might be an opportunity to deepen skills for students who are usually in supporting roles but have the potential to step up in a more active way.
When it comes to costs, it sounds like your team hasn’t typically struggled to fundraise for travel, which is great. If you can comfortably cover the travel expenses without hurting your budget too much, I’d argue that the benefits of competing early outweigh the financial savings of sticking with a local regional during spring break. Even though you dipped slightly into the negatives last year, you might be able to strategize differently with your fundraising to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Plus, competing earlier can sometimes help you identify areas where you need more sponsor support, which could potentially give you time to seek additional funding before the later competition.
On the flip side, there’s something to be said for the convenience of staying local and competing in week 5. It’ll save on travel costs, and your whole team is likely to be present. That can be huge for team morale, especially for students who might not be able to commit to traveling for an away regional. The challenge with this, though, is that week 5 is so close to week 6 that you’ll likely have limited time to make substantial changes to the robot. If the robot has issues, or if you want to optimize based on your week 5 performance, it may feel like you’re scrambling to fix things with not enough time in between. That tight turnaround could put a lot of pressure on your team, which can be tough to manage when you’ve got only a short window to test any changes before the next event.
Another factor to consider is how much your team values the overall experience, not just competition performance. Traveling for a regional, especially one earlier in the season, can offer bonding experiences and a chance to see what other teams are doing well ahead of your second event. It can expose your students to new ideas and strategies that they might not encounter at a local regional. There’s a lot of value in seeing how different teams approach problem-solving, and traveling sometimes gives you the opportunity to compete against a more diverse field of teams.
In the end, I think the balance comes down to whether your team can handle the lower attendance during spring break. If the group that can attend is strong enough, I’d go with the farther regional to take advantage of the extra time to iterate. But if attendance is a serious concern, and you think it will significantly affect your performance or ability to troubleshoot during the competition, the closer regional might be the safer bet.