[Alpha Beta]

Some interesting ideas for a Missouri district from another thread.

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

80 teams in Kansas and Missouri should be enough. Assuming growth next year, you'd want 5 events. Looking at Where in the World is FIRST, you'd want 2 in the Kansas City area, 2 in the St Louis area and 1 somewhere in between (Maybe Jefferson City).There's be a lot of duplicates between the Kansas City events and the St Louis events, but some teams will want to travel, and provide mixing of the regions.

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Add southern Illinois to the KSMO district system! Say all the teams from Springfield IL on down.

Also include Iowa and Arkansas. Not sure about OK, they might want to join a Southwestern district system (i.e., Texas, Louisiana, etc.) instead.

All this speculation highlights your main point -- the teams are spread thin geographically. A strong district system should have at least five events, but more would be better. One event per twenty teams fits the FiM model, which is working well up here and in MAR right now.

All this speculation makes me miss my old team, and my old planning committee, back in St. Louis. Fun times ahead for you folks, I wish I could be there.

Since GKC and St. Louis were on the same weekend for the first time this year we never had the opportunity to get all the top teams in the state together. An invitational state championship offseason event would be a fantastic way to practice the logistics for a potential district championship without having to pay FIRST an exhorbinant entrance fee (which does not funnel back to the local tournament organizers). Lots of models (Minnesota, Indiana, etc..) to choose from. Noticed that St. Louis does not currently host an offseason event... (No pressure. ) Since it doesn't make sense to border off Southern Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas from Missouri, I'd invite them too based on points.

Jaxom already did a nice job of tallying up district points for Missouri and Kansas here. Just need to combine the lists and sprinkle in the Illinois and Iowa teams who attended Missouri regionals this year. (Maybe include 525 too for fun even though they, for the first time since 2006, did not play in Missouri and by school policy wouldn't be able to attend an offseason event here.)