Below you will find a short version of changes to the 2017 FIRST Championships District allocations and reasoning for those changes. If you want the dance version*, with more words and examples, click here.

There has been a concern raised about the fact that Districts get both a guaranteed percent representation at FIRST Championship and are allowed to send non-qualified teams from the waitlist to FIRST Championship. For the majority of Districts, this means over-representation at Championship from a strictly percent-of-teams approach, compared to Regional teams.

FIRST HQ values the opportunity for non-qualified teams to attend FIRST Championship, so we want to keep that option in place for Districts, but we do need to make an adjustment. So, for 2017, the initial value of the ‘available slots’ calculation used to determine District allocations, rather than being full Championship capacity, will be 10% less than full Championship capacity.

Also, if we were to use the percentage of teams from each District compared to all FRC, along with the total number of available slots at both FIRST Championships combined, in determining the number of District slots available at each of the two Championships, the St Louis Championship would be over-subscribed, or very close to it. Instead, the formula for 2017 will use the percent representation of each District compared to the number of FRC teams just within the geography assigned to the District’s home Championship, and that percentage will be applied just to the number of available slots at that particular Championship.

Even with these changes in place, if 2017 were to look like 2016 with respect to team counts, all Districts will have at least one more guaranteed slot at their Championship than they did in 2016. In addition, as noted above, they will still have access to non-qualified waitlist slots.

Estimates are below. Please note these values will of course shift with the actual numbers for 2017:

As with all things in this very new situation in 2017, we will be reviewing results and considering additional changes for 2018 and beyond.

Still TL;DR

Frank

*Do they still make dance versions?

**This assumption is guaranteed to be wrong, so look in the 2017 manual when it comes out for the actual numbers.