[wesbass23]

With you guys discussing different regions options I decided to look into the Midwest options (at least from a Wisconsin perspective) for last year.

With Michigan out of the picture and Indiana moving to districts (taking the Boilermaker regional with it) we are left with the following...

The 4 Minnesota regionals are weeks 1 and 6 but those are nearly filled by local MN teams with a couple of Wisconsin and Iowa teams filling in the open spots. The best options week 2 are Arkansas, Kansas City, and St. Louis (How did both of the MO regionals end up on the same week?). The closest of those is St. Louis, 6 hours away from Milwaukee, but a much better option for some of the Illinois team. Week 3 is Central Illinois and Buckeye (why go to Buckeye when you can go to CIR?). Week 4 is Iowa and Wisconsin, week 5 is Midwest.

If you don't want to travel the 6 hours to MO, you are pretty much stuck with weeks 3-5, with a high chance of ending up with back to back regionals. This may be helped a bit this year with the addition of a new regional in Wisconsin.

While this is no where near the difficulty that is appearing in NY, I know both WI and IL want to go to districts, some people in MN would like to as well. But there is no way they all go at the same time which means some states are going to be left in the dust with few options.