[AndrewPospeshil]

I don't necessarily think Districts make teams better. At least, it's not the cause, it's the effect. Areas that require districts already have a lot of teams, which are then going to have more really good teams that can make it to elims. Really districts basically says "hey, we have a lot of teams here." It doesn't mean that the teams are better - although they are by sheer virtue of having more teams means that there will be more world-class contenders. Also, FiM has a lot of teams that didn't move on to Worlds that still made it to MSC and are better than a lot of the teams that were at St Louis. I think that these mid-level Michigan teams could compete at worlds, but the limit that Michigan could send held them back.