FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

FIRST Championship Houston this year occurs on dates that coincide with some religious holidays. This can make the Houston event inconvenient or worse for teams, volunteers, and sponsors. We talked briefly about these challenges in this blog in June.

FIRST Championship dates are as they are because of the constraints we have on both sides of the calendar. With the growing number of qualifying events in the program, we need time to host those events before FIRST Championship while still giving teams time to travel. On the other end of the calendar, if we tried to push FIRST Championship into May, we would experience challenges with the testing that occurs in many school districts during that month. So, we need to make the best of the situation as it is.

In the blog I reference above, you will note that teams from Israel are being temporarily assigned to FIRST Championship Detroit for the 2019 season only, and that all teams in the country are being reassigned, even if some would prefer FIRST Championship Houston. You will also see that we are making this accommodation not because of the religious holiday itself, but because of the practical consequences of the holiday – cost and difficulty of travel.

We recognize other FIRST Robotics Competition teams may have extraordinary challenges with attending FIRST Championship Houston because of the consequences of religious holidays occurring at the same time. Teams may request reassignment to FIRST Championship Detroit in 2019 by sending an email stating your case to frcteamadvocate@firstinspires.org. Because of the limited available slots we predict at FIRST Championship Detroit, and, out of fairness, our very strong preference that teams attend the event to which they’ve been assigned geographically, few requests will be granted. Teams requesting reassignment must make an extraordinarily compelling case. Your case can be strengthened greatly by providing documentation from your host organization (your school, for example) indicating the entire team will not be allowed to travel to FIRST Championship Houston because of the dates on which it falls.

The deadline for submitting requests is January 24, 2019, at 5 PM Eastern Time. If your team thinks there is a chance you will be attending FIRST Championship and attending FIRST Championship Houston will be an extraordinary challenge because of the consequence of those religious holidays, your team should submit a request.

If you have questions about this, please put them in the comments section below.

Thanks!

Frank