[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by LFrisk

I won't get into other things with this post, but this annoyed me especially. As far as I know, his worry rests more with the fact that he would probably have to do 6 straight weekends of competition in a row, not to mention Worlds. Minnesota already has 4 large regionals, 5 if you were to count Iowa, and Minnesota would probably need 12 districts to accommodate all the teams here. To my knowledge, there are two scorekeepers and two or three FTAs in Minnesota FIRST. I don't know for sure, but I believe that there are only two or three Head Refs in Minnesota. (Don't quote me on that last one.) I know that Daredad has already done Northern Lights and will be scorekeeping at one of the Twin cities regionals, in addition to Iowa. I assume the FTAs and other Scorekeepers are equally busy. Would you want them to have that much more work for 10 more minutes of match time per event?

So how exactly do you recruit more FTAs into the region if there are only three FTA "spots?" If the regionals don't advertise that they need FTAs, because all their FTA spots are filled, how is anyone supposed to learn how to do the job or even know that it is needed?

The same thing goes with any other key volunteer position. I hear this argument all the time: "My region can't go into districts because we don't have enough key volunteers." But how are you supposed to get those key volunteers if there is nowhere for volunteers to go? In other words, you really have to just bite the bullet and go into districts in order to get those key volunteers. You won't get enough volunteers for 16 district events if you only have three regionals to put your volunteers in. I think you'd be surprised how many volunteers will show up if the spots are open.