Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeE
Thanks Navid - it's really interesting to see the differences in Regional and team distribution.
Districts don't make as much sense if the team population is lower than ~150% of a event size, allowing 3 district events + district championship. Typically District events are 40 teams although PNW has smaller events.
A district of only 30-40 teams would mean both events + district "championship" had every team competing, so it's not really a championship in any traditional sense*
This puts a practical lower limit of around 50 teams for a District.
* too soon?
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True, however, these areas can be lumped in with nearby districts. For example, here in West Virginia, we only have 4 teams. We hosted the state's first ever FRC event last summer in the off-season. But as stated above, we will likely be going into districts with Ohio and Western PA in 2017.
Districts will eventually happen everywhere. Because it's a hard sell to rural teams (who are already disadvantaged in that aspect) to pay 5,000 to go to an event and an additional several thousand if you want to go to another event that is really far away (think the next closest area with a regional), when more "urban" teams (or teams in districts) get a cost break, and more matches for less money. Districts will happen everywhere, even if that means that the "remaining" teams will lump into a nearby district. It is not really sustainable otherwise.