[Squillo]

I think most of the kids (probably all of them) on our "middle-of-the-road" team would be just as happy, excited and inspired to go to a "half-worlds" championship, get to play with and be inspired by half of the best teams in the world, as to go to a true "World Championship." I can see both sides of that part of the argument. If this new arrangement actually accomplished that for a majority of teams, it might have SOME merit. Though a "super-regional" on the west coast would do just as well in that regard.

It's just a shame that their attempt to "lower travel costs" does absolutely nothing for the teams on the whole west side of the mainland US, not to mention Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, China, Japan, and the other teams we play with over here. Nor for teams in Europe/Israel/etc.

When I started reading the post, I thought - "Wow! Geographical split! They're finally going to have a championship event on the west coast! (Because west coast/east coast, or something similar - Detroit/Las Vegas, maybe? - was so obvious...) But then I read on.... You can't tell me that they couldn't find any city in the whole west side of the continent that could host this event???

This makes things easier for the MI/Toronto/NE/MAR teams only, as far as I can tell. Someone should figure out exactly what percentage of all the teams are benefited in any way by this, and ARE they the teams that really NEED that help the most? Does this actually benefit teams that are NOT currently attending champs BECAUSE of the travel cost? I'd like to see some data on that. Where are the teams who qualify for champs but can't go because of cost - are they in Michigan or NY? Or in Washington State, China, and Israel? Or in Florida? Just curious. I know if we'd qualified any year between 2011 and this year, inclusive, we would most likely not have been able to go, due to cost.