[Lil' Lavery]

Perhaps I'm missinthing here, why do teams from these sparsely populated areas feel the district model will actually be better for them? If anything, it will increase their travel costs further. A district structure isn't going to ensure they have a local event to attend. Districts in Michigan were first introduced in 2009, and 2014 was the first year there was a district event in the upper peninsula. For areas with low team populations (Idaho and West Virginia, for instance), it's incredibly unlikely that they would gain multiple district options within a close range. The end result is that teams will then have to travel long distances two or three times per season, rather than just once. While certain teams in these regions already do that, most in Idaho do not (and it was a 50/50 blend among West Virginia's four teams this past season).

While Indiana is showing you don't have to have the 100+ team population to start a district system, the four active teams in West Virginia or the fourteen active teams in Idaho is not enough to cut it under any FRC competition structure we've seen so far. Lumping these areas in with neighboring districts still forces significant travel, and now more than one time per season. Until there's team population growth in these areas, new events are unlikely to be created there regardless of the system used.