[EricH]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Eric,

Step by step logic here would be really helpful. I'll take it question by question:

1. Do we agree that Northern California has proven to have a sufficient number of already-tested high school venues to support 6 district events in NorCal?

You're the NorCal expert. I'm not going to make any statement here.

2. Does SoCal needs 9 to 10 district events, assuming 175 teams?

3. How many district events could be covered from the current list, and how many more options do you think we need in SoCal to be "relatively confident" (whatever that means to you)?

Assuming 175 teams, 9. Assuming that no rookies crop up, which would probably put the count to 10.

That's actually rather dependent. There's at least one glaring hole in that list where there's maybe two spots that are going to be difficult (the colleges--trust me, I've got friends that go to one of 'em, getting a college gym is difficult--the exception would be spring break if someone doesn't beat FIRST to it). There's large areas--northwest LA county for one--that aren't covered.

4. How many High Schools are in SoCal?

No idea.


Here's where the fun starts, though. Yes, there are enough high schools. (We'll assume that that's the case, because I don't have those numbers. I assume that you have made some effort to get them, or you wouldn't be asking.) The question is: At what cost? One of the possible places that the Torbot mentors were tossing around actually managed to nix an FLL Championship event being held there, simply by deciding that "hey, this robotics group has lots of money, let's charge them"--after said event had been held there previously. We should be out of CIF season, so that's less of an issue (Spring Scrimmage got bumped by a CIF basketball game). You've also got the "skeptical administrator" and the "Sure, pay us an arm and a leg" and the "Sorry, booked up by X, Y, and Z" to deal with. Those can be worked around... but it's going to take a lot more time.

Math doesn't lie: There is the possibility. But you've got to have people on the ground looking. What you've got down here is, largely, one team looking in their area. You need more people looking in more places. Central Coast? Lancaster/Palmdale/Antelope Valley? South Bay/Beach Cities? San Fernando Valley? I've seen people commenting in the thread from those areas. I can't say any of them have put venues in the list. I know I'm not in a position to put down a venue as "yes, this one can most likely host". (If I could, I would.) I know several venues that would probably be disqualified on one or more "obvious" grounds, so if one of those shows up I can put down a note that says "Hey, X is going to make life difficult".

Let me put it this way: I'm not opposed to districts, in the proper time. But when someone who is outside my area, with relatively limited visibility into my area, simply says, "This is the way we want to do it over your area, and with *handwaving here* it'll happen"--I'm really sorry, but I'm going to call you on that. You need more people down here, to get more visibility into the situation down here. They should have been there from the beginning. And the people that are down here are telling you that there are problems--problems that you are blowing off as "That can be fixed, just use some imagination and creativity". Problems that we know can be fixed, but we don't know how much time and effort it'll take over and above what we're already putting into this program just to find a solution, let alone execute it.