[rpaulsen]

This is something that my team has been struggling with this issue for 2 years now. We are a 3rd year team out of New Rochelle (3 miles north of the Bronx), and have been trying to expand to more events than the NYC Regional. Long Island is by far the best option for us because Hofstra is 45 minutes away, as opposed to Troy which is 3.5hr with no traffic, and is most commonly closer to 5 because downstate NY traffic is terrible always. To underscore how expensive it would be to go to Troy, which we registered and eventually dropped from last year, it is still not financially worth while to compete in the event and there is a NASA Regional challenge grant that we would most likely qualify for. Travel expense are just way to high, almost to the point of doubling the cost of registration.

Looking realistically at the geography of NYS teams, there are 3 or 4 teams in Westchester County sitting on top of the Long Island and City teams. There is then at least a 2.5 hour drive from the northern most Westchester team, to the next group of teams in the capital region. It would make no sense to build a district that tries to incorporate all NYS teams, our major population centers are just too spread out to the boarders. As previously suggested, a better idea is to forget the state boundaries and think regionally. Adding Northern New Jersey to a Long Island/NYC/Westchester district, and the Capital Region to Western Mass, would make far more sense than trying to shoe horn them together. And frankly, I can not speak to Western/Lake Region NY because in the 30 years I have lived in the state of NY I have never been west of the Catskills, and that is not an uncommon statement for those of us who live in the Metro region.

Anyway, we really need to move to the district model, or I fear teams will start dropping out of FRC based solely on economics. $9000 in registration fees to compete twice (or really $5000 to compete once) is difficult to sustain.