Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryVoshol
Well, not quite. Houghton still is 3 hours from their nearest event at Escanaba. Then it's 7 hours (in good weather) to the next closest at Traverse City. (Michigan is a BIG state. It's farther from Detroit to Houghton than it is from Detroit to Baltimore, MD.)
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Yeah, unfortunately Michigan and the PNW (being broader geographical areas) have a harder time keeping districts close to teams...
Even in New England (which collectively is about 75% as large by area as Michigan, and obviously lacks the isolated effect of the UP) there are tough situations for teams... The most remote team in Vermont (2370 from Rutland) currently has to drive 2hr, 18min and 2hr, 35min to get to their two closest districts. The most remote team in Maine (5122 from Old Town) has to drive 1hr, 53min and 3hr, 8min to their two closest districts.
That obviously doesn't even include teams that don't even exist in the most remote large population centers (let alone more remote areas). A team in Caribou, ME would have to drive 4.5hr and 6hr to get to two districts... Teams in Burlington, VT (the center of the most populous region in VT) would have to travel 3hr to get to their first two districts.
Unfortunately, FRC still hasn't reached far enough into the rural areas of the country... Note though, that this gets better with districts (not worse!) because expensive, large Regionals aren't even feasible in a lot of the regions we can legitimately discuss hosting a district event.