REEFSCAPE By The Numbers

Part of the wrap up from each season is reviewing survey feedback from participants and volunteers. We use this information to plan short and long-term programmatic improvement projects and guide our work between seasons. Today, I’m excited to share some of that data with our community!

I’ll share some overall season statistics before we get into the survey data. There were 3731 registered teams in FIRST^® Robotics Competition in the 2024-2025 season. Those teams played at 185 events (counting multi-division events like District Championships and the FIRST^® Championship as one event). There were 7447 event plays at Regionals, District Events, and District Championship events. At those events, teams played 17,867 qualification and elimination matches.  More than 14,000 different people volunteered at FIRST Robotics Competition events last season!

Not counting Championship, 26% of FIRST Robotics Competition teams played at 1 event this season, 49% played at 2 events, and 26% of teams played at more than 2 events.

Now some survey data! From our weekly event survey, REEFSCAPE^SM presented by Haas received 86% positive and 3% negative ratings on game satisfaction. This is based on nearly 15,000 responses. REEFSCAPE’s game satisfaction is in line with the game satisfaction scores for CRESCENDO.

Based on nearly 19,000 survey responses, event satisfaction was 86% positive and 6% negative. Event satisfaction for REEFSCAPE is around 3 points higher than it was for CRESCENDO. The FIRST Robotics Competition staff uses top-level survey data for programmatic changes, and partners are provided with their specific event survey results so that they can also look for areas of improvement.

One of our big changes this year was to Alliance Selection. The group that recommended the change had three main goals for Alliance Selection: to provide a consistent Alliance Selection experience across events; to empower student representatives to make informed, efficient selections; and reduce real and perceived pressure placed on student representatives. Here is the survey data for questions on how the new process helped us achieve those goals. I extend a huge “thank you” to the team that worked on developing this change and to the volunteers who implemented it across all the events.

A new question on this year’s survey asked respondents what the “best part of the event” was. People could select three choices. I’ve long believed that the real strength of FIRST programs is the community that you can be part of while participating in them. To me, these survey results back up that theory. So, thank you all for being part of what makes this program so special!

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to complete all the surveys that we send out. We know that we ask a lot of you. These surveys are one of the ways that we know what we’re doing well and where we can improve. The responses matter to us at the global, regional, and event level. The end of season survey is currently open and was sent out to Lead Mentors 1 & 2 as well as all students registered within our systems. We’ll share interesting data and takeaways from it later this summer.