hi, here at my school we are going to be having a competition. What is confusing me is that some competitions are labeled as “Tournaments” or “League”. I really don’t know the difference, and if it has some sort of different meaning. If someone could help it would be very appreciated. Oh, and also if we are going to start one, when should we start ordering the field elements for it?
Leagues are typically a tournament that runs for multiple nonconsecutive days.
Leagues in our area typically run one day a week for several weeks. For example every other Tuesday evening. The first three evenings of competition are only qualifying matches (typically 5 matches each) and then the elimination is held on the last evening.
We run leagues at the beginning of the season so teams in the area have more opportunity to compete. A team will work on their robot and then compete, then they work to improve and compete again. By the time that the all day tournaments start our teams already have experience competing on the field.
Another benefit of the league is that if a team loses three matches on one day they are not out of the running as they could be in a one-day tournament. The awards in Leagues advance teams just as they would in a tournament and there are multiple opportunities to run skills.
The biggest difference between a Tournament and Leagues is that a Tournament is held in one (sometimes two) day(s), while a League is held over multiple weeks.Teams show up every week, play a few matches in a short 2-3 hour timeframe, then go home. Scores and rankings are still kept of course, so it’s basically just like holding a tournament over the course of a month, instead of a few hours.
Here is a bit more information regarding leagues that was presented at the EP Summit last year:
https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2017/07/ep-summit-2017-vrc-league-play.pdf
As far as ordering Field Elements goes, if you’re able to buy them now, and have the storage, I can’t really think of a reason to wait. If nothing else, it gives your own team the needed elements to practice (or additional elements to split between teams if you’ve already got a set).