```


Thank you all for your posts. While we appreciate the concerns of teams from the greater robotics community, the specific issue raised in this thread is a California specific issue and not an REC Foundation policy issue.

Let’s start with some background information. There are approximately 1,700 teams in California from which up to 245 move forward to the state championship events. Team capacities for the state events are as follows: 147 VRC HS, 80 VRC MS, 64 VEX IQ ES, and 54 VEX IQ MS. There are 3 VRC high school, 2 VRC middle school, 2 VEX IQ middle school and 2 VEX IQ elementary school championship events. Teams that qualify are able to register for any one of the events at the appropriate age level. They are not assigned to a particular event venue. When a venue fills the teams must then go to an open event venue if they wish to play. For this reason, all events at a specific age level are given the same number of Worlds qualifying spots. Worlds spots are not assigned after teams sign up.

The last California qualifying events were run this weekend with the last event being finalized last night (after this thread started). California teams that qualified this past weekend are still in the process of getting school permission to travel and registering for state championship events.

The event capacity at the Northern CA high school event venue capacity was lowered to assure that those teams who qualified via the standard event qualification structure this weekend are assured a place to play. The event capacity has been placed back at 48 teams. Skill invitations will be sent out once registrations from standard qualifications have been confirmed.

Maximum event capacity in each city is set by the venue size and Fire Marshall requirements.

Events qualifying for the California States Championships were allotted spots based upon the event’s size, the total number of events at each age level, and total capacity of the state events.

The California team is working on expanding the State Championship capacity for the 2018-2019 season.
```