Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginger Power
Minnesota's growth in recent years has slowed. We've reached a temporary plateau, but I don't expect that it will hold. There are a lot of potential teams to the northwest of the cities. However, with that said I don't think switching to districts will become more difficult over time. The oldest, active Minnesota team is just going into their 11th season. A lot of younger teams are just starting to figure things out and provide volunteers for events.
Also from conversations with smarter people than myself, I've learned that running an event of any size requires a pretty similar amount of volunteers. Especially key volunteers as you stated. That's without even considering the workload of the volunteer coordinator...
Assuming you do need to run 2 events per week for 6 weeks rather than our current 5 events (counting Iowa) during 3 different weeks, that's 7 more events in total. Focusing solely on key volunteers, it would require more than double the current number if they maintain the same workload. It's not feasible for an LRI to take 6 weekends off to help run an event.
TL;DR: As Minnesota gets older, the number of key volunteers will go up, which is the limiting factor for going to districts. The non-key volunteers will be there when we need them.
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If definitely will get harder if MN waits too long. As it is they can handle things with less than 12 events, and better yet less than 11. Once the team count gets too high depending on the size of venues that are willing and fit with in the schedule you get into a situation where there needs to be 3 events on the same weekend. Now you really do have a volunteer problem and an infrastructure problem needing to worry about 3 fields worth of equipment or renting the stuff which increases the cost of an event dramatically.
The other thing is that a district event is 2/3 the length and many are on Sat/Sun and are potentially closer to home. So a person can take off the same time form work or less to volunteer at 2 district events vs 1 Regional. Since they are potentially closer to home that also means no or less cost for lodging. Add in the fact that you now have 3 times as many weekends to choose from and you get people who are willing to do 2 or maybe even 3 events when they have only done 1 Regional in the past.