[waialua359]

Originally Posted by EricH

You mean like Hawaii?

Here's the #1 problem with districts in HI.

It's NOT the number of teams.
It's NOT the distance from the mainland.


It's that Every. Single. Time. a team from HI wants to compete in a location that is NOT on their island, they have to airfreight the robot AND fly the team (well, they could possibly catch a ferry... but that takes a lot longer).


So, for those of you in MI, particularly the Lower Peninsula, to understand: You need to attend an event at the MN border, and the Mackinac Bridge is out (and there's a ferry starting in Detroit if you really want to take a couple of days). Now make that TWO districts like that. That's Hawaii's problem, in a nutshell.

I wish it was that good.
The teams that are not on Oahu complain every year. The amount they spend to compete in Honolulu is astronomical and more than half of what they would spend to compete in California as an example.
Robots have to be flown to every event attended other than Oahu teams. There is no ferry that you speak of. Long gone. Robots would never be able to compete in back to back weekends due to the way it has to ship from event to event.
With hotel expenses, the neighbor island teams find themselves spending a lot more than us who can go home daily.
Driving to an event makes districts more feasible. Being from Hawaii makes it just about impossible both financially and logistically.