[Aren Siekmeier]

Minnesota, being I believe 2nd or 3rd for most FRC teams (MI is of course at the top, Texas in there somewhere, and California???) may also break into districts soon, depending on how FIRST assesses the success of the pilot and where Mark Lawrence and co. want to take Minnesota FIRST. So it's kind of interesting to think how things would be different.

First off, it does seem silly that the districts should be locked. Teams within a state (or region, I guess would probably be the case on the East Coast), should have the freedom to pick and choose districts. This helps relieve the monotony you get from seeing the same people over and over, and it probably wouldn't create any imbalance in competition (in fact, it would probably relieve that, too, with some of the better teams perhaps looking around for easier events, more average teams looking around for more competitive events, or vice versa, probably an even distribution).

If teams are left out of a state/region, for example in 2791's case, or for the few teams in the Dakotas, or wherever, there should be a straightforward process of applying to that state/region's tournament and participating as any other member (plus commute). And I say straightforward because it musn't discourage the formation or continuation of teams in such areas. The tricky part would be determining how remote a team must be to do such a thing (or maybe you don't care? as long as each team is in only one tournament, plus as many regionals as they want...)

Well that's a lot of unorganized thought on the subject...