Quote:
Originally Posted by Pault
New England tried to make it optional for upstate NY teams to join our district, and FIRST HQ said no. In a Frank blog post they said they MIGHT change their policies, so there is still hope for Hawaii (although you would have to be insane to travel to 2 districts on the mainland; 4 times if you want to make it to champs).
|
Given what has been said in the past about the Hawaii Regional staying as a separate, traditional event for the foreseeable future, I imagine they would have the chance to opt-in to a district event without "playing for points" to get to the big show (359 doesn't need one, obviously, but there are other teams in Hawaii that do). In fact, I suspect that any early form of cross-play will not have teams playing for points outside of their specified area.
SIdebar 1: I guess the rationale is that there are teams playing out of the region that would not alter just the distribution of points, but the perceived competitive goals of the structure, which is to determine the best teams in the bordered region. I guess we may see districts evolve into 9-10 "qualifying matches" and 2-3 "exhibition matches" where cross-play occurs without any points being awarded.
Sidebar 2: Do we call it "cross-district play", or cross-regional play? The terminology is all a tad cumbersome. Districts make up the FiM program, which is a state, but all other district-ed areas are multi-state, thus making those a "region" of states, except for the fact we still have traditional events that are called "regionals" that subscribe to no border.
Yeah, that's obnoxious to think about.