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Originally Posted by PayneTrain
As a Virginian involved with VirginiaFIRST, I personally would like to see all 3 stay separate but transition the current competition of the tri-region over to the district system, which would likely result in 8 district events and a championship at VCU. For those who don't know, VCU's Siegel Center is the closest you can get to "grandaddy of them all" for FIRST venues, behind only Eastern Michigan University for oldest active regional locations, once again, if my memory doesn't escape me. In addition, it's not out of the question to see the commonwealth of Virginia grow to a number of teams in the next 5 years where VirginiaFIRST would prefer to structure its own district system structure separate from DC and Maryland, much like Michigan.
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What about cutting Virginia in half? I'm not incredibly familiar with VirginiaFIRST. I'm thinking along the lines of what they did with MAR. It's New Jersey, Delaware, and the eastern half of PA (I'm not sure of exactly where the cutoff is), so there is still the Pittsburgh regional for teams in the western half of the state.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
Why does that matter? Grundy High School (team furthest to the west) has been travelling the extra hour to the Virginia Regional for all 14 years of its existence, and they likely would not want or be given an opt-out.
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It matters because teams with fewer resources stay closer in the hopes that they don't have to worry about getting a hotel or finding parents willing to drive kids to far regionals. Before MAR, a lot of South Jersey teams opted to attend the Philly regional over the NJ regional because it was closest, even though NJ would've technically been their "home regional."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Flynn
I'm wondering if it would be possible to set up a travel cost sharing system for those teams that are on the edge of districts and would have two travel events. Teams that were close to the center of the district would pay some fee due to the fact that they were near the center and this would be used to help the travel teams afford to attend a second event. Or maybe just have the travel team pay a lower entry fee.
I would think this would help teams to promote team growth on the outskirts of their region and in turn grow enough teams so they could hold their own event and no longer need this travel stipend. Is this something that's ever been considered?
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Not that I know of, but it's not rare to see teams sharing buses to cut down on costs. I'd imagine teams could do something similar to this for district events.