Quote:
Originally Posted by Kims Robot
Im not at all surprised. If you take a look at this map, it shows the distribution of teams, and you can zoom into NE. You can see how heavily weighted the MA teams are to the east, and how the density of teams in general is weighted towards southern NE.
The official breakdown of teams from 2013 is
57 in MA (33 of which are w/in 25mi of Boston - which for a state that is over 150mi wide, thats a pretty heavy concentration)
45 CT
29 NH
14 ME
6 RI
3 VT
For Reference the WPI event is 46 miles from Northeastern. Nashua is 48 miles, and Bryant (RI) is 52mi. WPI to Hartford is 64mi. WPI to Southington is 82mi. You can see that "being forced out of state" is really not a significant difference in travel.
Plus with the number of MA teams that traveled to other events like BAE or Pine Tree or CT, I don't think having teams that want to go out of state for events will be that much of an issue.
And the other thing you need to take into account when you look at where the events are is potential host locations, and potential committees. Trust me, most teams would rather have a well run district event in a good venue that might take an extra 30min to drive to than a really poorly run event in a bad venue that might be 30min closer. Plus with the District Championship in Boston, I would think MA teams could hardly complain...
If you guys want to volunteer to staff a committee to run another Boston area District event & have a good venue available, I'm sure people would be all ears for 2015  .
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After mapping out the events, I realized that it isn't actually that bad. Although I still believe that there should be a second Boston area event, because like you said there are 33 teams within 25mi. Although your right that I can't complain that much with the Championship here.
Regarding the Saturday-Sunday events, I am really not liking them, considering my team's situation. We are a Catholic school, so there will be moral conflicts with events and a big red flag will be raised with the school administration (I doubt they will stop us from going, but I don't think they will be very happy, and I understand why). Also, students at our school get a lot of homework, and the 3rd quarter ends around this time for us, so its going to be a nightmare to try and get homework done (especially for the people who have to help load in on Friday night, are drivers and need plenty of rest on both nights, and/or are going to be creating a picklist on Saturday night).
Well, I guess sometimes life gives you lemons. Time to make lemonade.