Quote:
Originally Posted by JimWright949
You may have missed my post earlier that put three districts around Boise, one of them could be in Butte, Helena, or Great Falls.
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You're right, I did. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the mountains and the long drive over them to an event.
My point is this: When you're drawing the region boundaries for districts, look at where the teams are going currently. 9 times out of 10, teams will go to their closest event or closest 2 events. If you have a team that is going to Utah and Colorado but not Spokane, then you should probably ask them if they're interested in being in a district that includes events in Great Falls, Helena, or Butte.
To take the South Dakota example, which I'm a bit more familiar with: Most of the (now non-existent) teams would have gone to Kansas City--this was before Colorado existed, let alone Minnesota or Utah (the regionals, not the states!), and I have that from one of the mentors at that time. But, with the current regional setup, teams in eastern SD would tend to go to Minneapolis for either 10K Lakes or North Star--it's only a few hours away. For the teams in the western half of the state, that's a full day's drive and possibly then some (5 hours to Sioux Falls, not counting the time change, then the few-hour drive). For those teams, Denver makes more sense, as it's only most of a day driving (or a short flight for a team who had a few frequent-flyer miles lying around)--if Utah was considered, it would be a second option along with Minnesota. So if MN decides unilaterally that the Dakotas are part of their district, the western half of the state will be in the same boat that Michigan's UP is in currently--their closest event is not in the district system. (Note that this whole example is currently a moot point--SD has no FRC teams.)
See where I'm going? I know you can't please everybody, but at least making the attempt is better than just saying "You are in our area". That's what MAR did by only including certain parts of Pennsylvania this year.
And, as a corollary: When forming a district, asking teams that go to only events in that area, regardless of where they are physically located, if they would like to stay in the district or not would be a really good idea. (Ask the Chilean team--one year at Great Lakes and then MSC formed, so they've been at Los Angeles ever since.)