[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Alex2614

Personally, I think that saying that we should only put districts in densely populated areas only gives the "urban" teams (and teams closer to urban areas) a bigger advantage over teams from more rural areas.

That is why I love that Indiana is doing this. It is proving to everybody that you don't need 150 teams in an area to do districts. I can't wait for the day that our team in West Virginia can be included in a nearby district region, such as Ohio or PA or whatever.

Looking down the road, even 5-10-15 years, I would hate to see everyone around us going into districts, and we are stuck traveling around these regions to traditional regionals, still paying $5,000 for one single event with 8-9 qualification matches, and traveling 10 hours to do so, with 4 nights in a hotel, which is exactly what we did in 2014. This is why I think, regardless of what FIRST says, out of necessity every team will eventually be included in districts. Otherwise we will have these "pockets" of teams paying much more for much less, and having to travel much further to get that. In order to expand FIRST in rural areas, we need to "level the playing field," so-to-speak, rather than giving areas with higher team density a bigger advantage.

I can't wait to see how it plays out in Indiana. One step closer to all-district!

The reason that FIRST agreed to this trial of a mini-district model was to see if it is a viable model that could be used in other areas that don't have the density for the current District System.