[mistersands]

As someone who grew up in Rochester, lives on Long Island and mentored a Long Island team, and now teaches in NYC and coach a NYC team, I can say that the logistics of each are so vastly different. But not overwhelming.

NYC is very hard to travel out of. Virtually none of my students have parents who have cars. Most of the parents don't speak English. In fact, on my team of 20+ students, I've only met the parents of 2. Many would not LET their child travel outside of NYC even on a school trip. A trip to Long Island would be fine, but upstate I might lose a third of my team to parents not wanting their children to travel. If it was overnight, I would lose over half. And NYC teachers are forbidden from transporting students in their own vehicles. I think some of the selected or prestigious schools like Stuyvesant and Townsend Harris have a bit more leeway with things though, as far as money/resources for travel. Schools like John Bowne often can feel a bit of a 'sour grapes' attitude towards those schools, justified or not.

If the competition migrates out of NYC, it would hurt the less established teams a lot more and be a barrier to new teams. I admit, I don't know the logistics of Districts compared to regionals.

Long Islanders are used to traveling. Almost all parents have cars, and in fact many students have cars. There are a few exceptions, Central Islip CI-borgs come to mind. These are the de facto segregated minority districts on Long Island.

Growing up in Rochester, we are used to overnight trips. I went to East High School in the city of Rochester. But we would sell candy, car washes, whatever we had to. We would raise money and go on overnight trips to NYC or DC. And my friends who went to suburban schools went on even more trips.

As for centrally located, what about Binghamton? It's actually somewhat easier to get to than Albany for a lot of places