Upper Midwest Districts
 

I brought up in an earlier thread the idea of an Upper Midwest District system, encompassing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota (maybe). I’d like to explore that idea further, and would love to have an open discussion about the potential of this idea, as well as the general topic of districts in the upper midwest. I’d also like to note coming into this that I am missing a HUGE amount of data here-- I’m not affiliated in any way with the Regional Planning Committee here in Minnesota (other than being a volunteer at Minnesota regionals), and don’t have access to anything “behind the scenes” other than my own personal experiences volunteering at these regionals and discussions with the incredible people who make the Minnesota regionals happen. Some of my information might not be correct-- though I’ve tried very hard to make it accurate-- and I’d very much appreciate any corrections.

Lets start with the basics of what an Upper Midwest District System would entail:

• This season, there would have been 247 teams in the proposed region (192 in MN, 41 in Wisconsin, 9 in IA, 3 in ND, 2 in SD)
• There are currently 5 regionals in this region (about the same as were replaced when NE went to Districts, by my count)
• A district system for this area would likely require 13-15 events-- depending on growth-- based on current District models (2 plays/team, max 40 teams at events), and 3 fields
• Based on current numbers, this region would send about 50 teams to the Championship event (for this season, there are 38 teams from the region currently registered)

A few other key points:

Not to rewrite the same argument in terms of cost that’s been made over and over in terms of the per-match cost (not factoring in elims, which would swing this vastly in districts’ favor), if we assume on average a team is paying $4500 per regional (that half of the plays are replays, which gives a lower average than in reality). Since each team got nine matches at each of these regionals, our math is easy-- on average, a team is paying $500 per match at these regionals. In our theoretical Upper Midwest Districts system, these teams would be paying $5000 (plus travel, but we won’t worry about that right now), for a minimum of 24 matches, which is an average of about $208 a match.

More interesting though is that the events would be able to better match the distribution of teams. Here are a couple maps of team distribution in Minnesota and Wisconsin (apologies for the colored zones on the Minnesota maps, I’m reusing these from our “team hub” maps). As you can see, Minnesota (and Wisconsin) both have teams that are out in the far reaches of the state-- districts would quite likely move the closest event for these teams significantly closer to home. Obviously, densest part of this region would be the Twin Cities area, which has about 90 teams, or ⅓ of the teams in the district system in it. So we’ll locate four events in that area, which potentially decreases costs for those teams, as now travelling is voluntary for them. 40 teams are in eastern Wisconsin, the second densest area, so lets say we put two events there (say Milwaukee and Appleton), which also decreases their travel costs. This leaves 7 more events minimum left-- there are currently two events in the Duluth area, so lets put two of those up there. Now, a large portion of teams in the districts area have seen significantly decreased travel costs (without including potential for a District Championship travel cost), but we still have five events left! One might go in Fargo-- I’m sure teams in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota would appreciate an event closer to home. Iowa would likely appreciate an event, so we might have one in Des Moines area. The La Crosse/ La Crescent area has a very strong FRC community, so we’ll put one there-- now we have a great event for teams who want to travel. We now have two events left, which could go in a few different places, but we’ll say we put one in Rochester or western Minnesota and one somewhere else in Wisconsin.

Apologies, I’ve digressed. My point is, we have events much closer to what makes geographical sense for more teams, which helps teams a lot.

As always, there are a couple of issues that would be relevant-- where would the Championship be held?
Another large issue with doing somewhere between doubling and tripling (!!!) the events in this area is recognizing the volunteer base necessary for this to happen. The conservative estimate I’ve seen for volunteers at a District event is 80-- 20 of which are key roles such as volunteer coordinators, lead robot inspectors, FTAs, and head referees. This means we’d have around 1000 volunteer slots to fill, which is a lot of volunteers! Moreover, if we have the same volunteer base we have now, that means we’d be pushing our current base to its limits-- take FTAs for example. As I understand it, we currently have 3 FTAs in the region. Lets say we manage to add another between now and the move to districts. We then have 4 FTAs to cover 13 events-- that’s at least three events per volunteer, which is a lot of time for volunteers who are often also team mentors. But it does seem doable (not that I’m incredibly qualified to make that statement)-- it’s impossible to make the transition completely smooth, no matter how hard we try or plan. I also know we had five lead robot inspectors up in Duluth, which, even if one weren’t able to volunteer in our theoretical district, would put us in the same boat as FTAs. I’ve heard that the one day Minnesota State Championship needed about 150 total volunteers to run-- unfortunately I’m not privy to information regarding the actual Minnesota regionals-- but I’m going to guess many of those volunteers were also at one or two of the other Minnesota regionals, which points to two things: we have 150 volunteers who are already doing essentially two events a season (likely more in terms of key volunteers), and there’s likely somewhere around 200-300 volunteers at each of the existing Minnesota regionals. Even if there’s a 100% overlap, we’re a large part of the way towards filling those 1000 volunteer slots-- and I’m not even considering the volunteers at Wisconsin Regional.

Obviously this isn’t a completely comprehensive analysis of the feasibility of districts in the Midwest-- unfortunately I don’t have data enough to make an estimate of the monetary cost of switching to districts-- but from the limited information I have, it certainly looks like a Midwest District system would be worth further discussion.

Re: Upper Midwest Districts
 

As a Michigan team near the edge of such a district: it would be nice to have the option for a nearby event that we might be able to attend at district price instead of regional price. Duluth at 4 hours, Milwaukee at 6 hours, or maybe in the future somewhere like Rhinelander, WI, at 2.5 hours. I don't know if we'd want more time out of school though, considering we'll already have 4 events this year (2 districts + district CMP + CMP).

Like happened in northern Michigan (with the Traverse City event, and later Escanaba), a district would help grow northern Wisconsin, which is utterly bereft of teams as of 2015. I'm curious as to why there aren't teams in Ashland, Rhinelander, Wausau, Superior, and Marinette.

If the proposed district is already at 247 teams, what happens when it grows? Would then the district be split? I wouldn't be surprised if Michigan might have to do something soon if it keeps growing.

In Michigan, each team is requested to provide at least 2 volunteers per event. Is that something that the Midwest regionals do? For a standard 40-team district event, that is an automatic source of 80 people.

Re: Upper Midwest Districts
 

For South Dakota, it depends on where the teams actually are. Any teams west of the Missouri would probably not appreciate driving east clear to MN for two events (though you'd probably want to ask them anyways, I suspect that Denver or Utah are better options for them). Speaking of which, that's exactly where both of them are: the Black Hills, and where both of them go: Colorado. If there were teams in Sioux Falls, then you'd probably have a pretty good chance of getting the SD teams, or at least half of them, but seeing as there aren't...

Including SD teams in a district "arbitrarily" isn't going to go over well, as they'd have a nice all-day drive to get to their nearest district event, or about 38 MN/ND/IA teams are going to have to have a similar nice all-day drive to get to one of their districts. (And I can only think of one place offhand that might work for a competition out there anyways. MAYBE 2-4, if you wanted to press your luck, or the various school gyms are a lot bigger than I think.)

Re: Upper Midwest Districts
 

I really agree with you on this-- with the current distribution of teams, it frankly wouldn't make sense for them to join unless they really wanted to. The "Upper Midwest" concept was inspired by the FTC North super-region, minus the areas that are either already in Districts (FiM and Indiana), likely to go to districts soon (IL, by some posts here), or are cut off by those districts (Ohio, West Virginia), which is why I put SD in there (with a question mark) in the first place.

Re: Upper Midwest Districts
 

One possibility would be an Upper Midwest district of Minnesota and Wisconsin, with inter-district play rules that allow teams in the nearby states to attend whichever district they choose. I'm guessing between having several teams within driving distance in Minnesota, there would be enough interest in having a district event in Southwest Minnesota, maybe Marshall, depending on the resources available out there. That could be attractive for teams in SD, especially to seed rookies in SD, but maybe Denver or GKC makes more sense otherwise. If out-of-district teams are allowed to act like in-district teams, they could make the choice right for them. North Dakota teams, I would imagine, would have a Moorhead district event, and any of Duluth, Alexandria, or St. Cloud would be no worse than their current first-event options. They may even want to be part of this Upper Midwest District.

The reason I leave Iowa out, at least for the time being, is that with the recent experience of hosting FTC North, in Des Moines and Iowa City, there are definitely venues available, and with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and (probably) Illinois going to Districts, there could be huge demand for a regional where all of these teams could play with their out-of-state friends, without commitment to a second travelling event. This extra demand might give them capacity for a regional, where a district event might just barely be tenable. I've heard varying estimates for the minimum of teams in a state before HQ will sign off on a regional, but Iowa might not be too far off.

But I've been out of the Midwest for most of a year. Maybe I'm a bit disconnected. I think I have the Minnesota perspective, but I'm curious what Wisconsin and Iowa teams would think. Maybe it makes more sense for Wisconsin to forgo joining Minnesota, and focus on expanding their program into more high schools. Maybe the financial aspect of joining with Minnesota, and its relatively large base of teams would make it easier for them. There are just so many unknowns.