Scrimmage scheduling experience?

[eaglesc]

Hi all,

The kids have latched onto the idea of hosting a scrimmage either pre-season or very early in the season. The scrimmage would be a Saturday morning event where teams would be paired up to solve made-up (possibly crazy) missions. More experienced teams would be paired with less experienced teams; the intention being to give experienced teams an opportunity to teach (aka share), and green teams a jump start. Large teams would be split up to keep the working groups at 10 or fewer. If Food Factor mats are available they would be used, if not then Body Forward. Above all the goal is to have fun. The top award will probably be a Rube Goldberg gold painted brick for most complicated way to perform simple mission with high reliability. Might also be able find a speaker to come in and talk about a food safety job. Registration fees: a) a donation to a local food shelf by check -- you pick the amount or b) one non-perishable food item per team member and coach to go the food shelf.

Now on to the question. There are a couple of options for the date: one is mid-August (before our school year starts) and the other is second week in September (first Saturday after school starts). Some of he kids favor mid-August since it's before Food Factor Challenge is released and some parents think it'll be a little easier to schedule. On the other hand, by waiting until after school starts some of the area school-based teams might be more likely to attend. We will send out a message to registered teams in our area through the regional partner to see if there is any interest. Any insights into scheduling? Is the entire idea dumb?

[Linda Zoe]

I'm not in your state, but my school district will not let me distribute team application forms or select team members until after school starts. So although my school would show up on a list of registered teams, the team will not exist until a week or two after school starts. The new teams you want to help may be in a similar situation of not actually have team members before the first day of school.

Linda

[dvz]

In my community, the public school team has hosted a mock tournament in mid-November. The intent is to provide a "safe" experience prior to the regionals. Twenty-five dollars or so to defray janitorial expenses and to provide a couple of small trophies. Parenthetically, this will become a 12-team regional this year.

Another approach might be for an experienced team to help with a regional kickoff, by providing simple programming moves to rookie teams and other visitors.

[Jsnlong]

We host a Rookie scrimmage each year. I started it my first year as coach becasue I seen need for new teams to get an idea of what a tournament looks like but more important just talking to other teams and brainstorming

But each year I find that no rookie team has much done come Nov when our scrimmage is. In ohio most of our tournaments are in Dec. So this year I think we will make it more of get open day then a scrimmage.

Most of the day is spent helping teams program and understand rules anyways so instead of worrying about a schedule we will just open the room for rookie teams to come hang out learn and pratice. Having older teams and coaches come and help the rookie teams The older teams an use the time also as practice running their table missions and even sharing their research projects to the group