Quote:
Originally Posted by Knufire
Are Canadian secondary schools generally smaller than American high schools? Interesting that all of the district venues are colleges or universities.
|
Absolutely. Obviously this is going to vary somewhat by region and there are a handful of outliers, but it is generally true. In particular, we don't put as much emphasis on our athletic facilities, which means that many high school gyms only have a seating capacity of perhaps 500 or so. A single high school in my area has a gym designed for almost 2000 people (in a single-court basketball configuration), and that's a huge rarity in the province.
Ontario regionals have always been at these University venues, so it makes sense to maintain them in the district system since they will likely be the same size of event in terms of number of teams. The alternative is cramming smaller events into high schools, which is technically possible, but not as comfortable. As was mentioned in the announcement, a challenge will be to maintain the regional quality on a smaller budget, but I'm confident that FIRST Canada will sort it all out.
As an aside, I'm thrilled that McMaster University (just down the street from our school) will be hosting! I know a lot of people worked for a very long time to bring that to fruition, and they did a great job!