[Nathan Streeter]

Great to see the schedule released! As Chris said, thank you for all the volunteers who plan and schedule the events... it's not easy and takes a lot of time!

That said, I'd just like to raise a few concerns I have with the schedule...

1. Scheduling 8 of 10 districts for Saturday-Sunday
I realize many people prefer Saturday-Sunday events, but our team would appreciate more Friday-Saturday events (Pine Tree is the only one in 2017!). We'll be planning to attend WPI and Pine Tree, based exclusively off not competing on Sundays. It really seems like a 50/50 split (perhaps one F-S event and one S-S event per weekend?) would be ideal. Last year the tone that we heard with the 3 non-Sunday events was that "our hands were tied by other factors, our goal is a better balance in 2017." I'm curious if this was just some people trying to tell us what we want to hear or if a balance of F-S and S-S actually isn't a goal.

Also, I'm curious, what drove WPI to be Thursday-Friday again (I believe it was S-S last year, but R-F once before)?

2. Interesting geographic distribution
I felt like the geographic distribution in previous years was generally pretty equitable. Event density roughly followed team density, with a little preference towards the remote teams (as it should be, in my mind). Ideally, if there are too many events for teams, it's in an area pretty central to NE (pretty much means in Massachusetts). This year it definitely looks like the CT teams have the short end of the stick... two districts under-represent their teams (although the one in RI makes up for it somewhat) and the DCMP is also the furthest from CT that it's been to date. I like the idea of rotating the DCMP around, but I also wouldn't mind if it was just in a more central location each year (WPI or Boston, perhaps?).

3. Event timing (given location)
Having all 4 MA events in Weeks 2 and 3 is inconvenient for those teams. NH and CT are closer to being balanced.

4. DCMP Week 6
I'm not sure if this is good or bad (compared to Week 7). It's nice to have that break between the districts and CMP to reduce the likelihood of having back-to-back events, but at the same time, having more time before CMP will definitely be a plus... It's a lot harder to organize travel to CMP than to DCMP!

Back on the positives though, it is cool to see some new locations hosting districts... Bedford HS and Bridgewater-Raynham HS are both new locations, as far as I know.

I'm just quoting some of the other folks who I'm echoing:

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I'm sure this was the best that could be done with date and scheduling conflicts everywhere, and that lots of people worked hard to get us this, but like a lot of regions in the country this year, this isn't quite ideal. Every event in MA is within the span of two consecutive weeks. The two week 3 MA events are 20 minutes apart. NE Champs is week 6. Most teams iin the region this year will end up competing back to back in one way or another.

I'm also a little anxious about DCMP. The location isn't very central to the region, and I'm a bit worried about finding close hotel space. I've also heard some difficulties with UNH in the past - e.g. in 2015 they infamously didn't allow drilling or filing metal in the pits. I'm sure that particular issue is solved for this event, but it does raise some concerns.

Regardless, lots of great venues this year, and there seem to be multiple events local to almost anyone in NE, so that's good.

Originally Posted by Dan Petrovic

You should be. There really isn't that much hotel space within walking distance. Hartford isn't centrally located, either, so I'm glad that NE FIRST is still moving the championship location around.

I believe the issue here was that they needed to put ice down immediately after the event and having a lot of metal shavings on the floor would interfere with that. The college hockey season should be over by the time NEDCMP comes around, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Originally Posted by jwfoss

I appreciate the hard work that goes into the locations and plannings for the district events every year but I am more disappointed with the locations than any other year. Based on team density, CT only having two districts seems wrong. Last year the Springfield event made up for this by its close proximity. This year the closest non-CT events appear to be RI and WPI.

With that being said, 558 is excited for a new season and exploring our options for playing both inside and outside the district for the first time.

Originally Posted by jweston

Sorry to see no UMass Dartmouth this year. I know we'll be thinking long and hard about our options. Typically we like to do 3 district events that are well spaced. 5 weeks with NECMP on week 6 makes this tough. We'll see what shakes out.