The Searcy Advertising and Tourism Promotion Commission provided $66,000 in funding this week for a FIRST Robotics Competition Arkansas Regional to be held at Harding University in March that is expecting to draw a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 to Searcy.
Harding Academy Robotics Coach Brian Jones made the request Tuesday on behalf of the Creative Group of Arkansas in partnership with FIRST Robotics, saying the regional is “an official event” that will be held in Rhodes-Reaves Field House on March 31-April 2.
“We have teams coming in right now from five different states and Mexico,” Jones said. “Numbers could go up, but right now we are projecting around 1,000 to 1,500 people in attendance. Hopefully, we hit that 80 percent or more in hotels.
“This is a multi-night stay so we’ll have a number of teams, especially our Mexico team, come in on Wednesday night, March the 30th. So we’ll have those multi-night stays, they’ll be able to have dinner, all that kind of stuff as well.”
The $66,000 is the same amount the A&P Commission pledged in 2020 to try to bring a FIRST Robotics regional tournament to the White County Fairgrounds in 2021. However, the season was “pretty much shut down” last year because of COVID-19.
“It has been a crazy couple of years for our side with school sports and everything … and our program being international,” Jones said. “You know last year we had funding approved for that event that was going to be at the White County Fairgrounds, and then across the world, it was canceled again, and that’s out of our control. But this year we are not just hopeful, we feel very strongly that things are going to happen. We’ve already started the season, it opened up Jan. 8th, so we are moving.”
Jones mentioned the Ozark Mountain Brawl offseason scrimmage that was held at the end of October and funded by $7,000 from the A&P Commission being “a huge success.”
“We probably had 600 people in attendance,” he said. “We polled at the gate and we hit our 80 percent in hotels, overnight stays, so that was our goal. Our numbers were down due to COVID, but we still hit our percentage of hotels there as well.”
The application for the regional funding indicated that 20-plus teams will be participating in the tournament.
Harding University, according to Jones, has been generous in donating use of the field house, conference spaces, electrical, security, custodial, a generator , machine shop and internet. The value of all these was listed as being $78,000.
The budget for items for the event listed insurance cost as being $4,200; expo (pipe, drape, linens and walkway covers) $2,500; emergency medical technician for four days $2,500; audio-visual, lighting and sound rigging $28,000, COVID cleaning $2,000; catering for volunteers and staff $14,000; hotel for staff $3,500; floor covering $4,500; support event costs $22,000 and cabling for pit and field power $1,000.
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