Quote:
Originally Posted by Anupam Goli
The GRITS offseason event was hosted at a high school in 2015. I do think we have some larger 6A schools in the Metro Area that can host district events. What I heard initially was the reason for the locations was due to an effort to expose students to in-state technical colleges and universities. The district events are partially hosted by engineering and technology departments at Columbus State University, Albany Tech, Dalton State College, and Riverside Military Academy (a college-prep school). I'm hoping the switch to Riverside Military from KSU indicates that we are exploring high school venues.
While it is a noble effort, I believe that a convention at the state championship, ALA the Championship Event would be better to educate and raise awareness of in-state engineering and technology degree programs. The district events themselves should be cheap and easy to travel to.
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You are right about wanting to expose the students to in-state technical colleges. That is one of the reasons we tried colleges before convention centers (although dalton and Albany will be in convention centers). We also try to partner with the colleges for support (for example at KSU they did a lot of the AV, and at UGA they brought a LOT of volunteers).
When I said high schools are too small I did not just mean space, but also resources. For example for Riverside Military Academy, we have to bring in a generator for power (which is a big hassle). Highs school venues simply are not designed to hold large events. In addition, High Schools tend to put school events first, making it hard to find a date that works for us the them.
As for the reason we went for Riverside Military Academy over KSU, it wasn't our choice. KSU said no to hosting both GRITS and a District Event (due to basketball). We did try to find another venue in the area but were unable to do so. This is why we went with Riverside Military Academy. One thing to note on Riverside Military Academy is that although it is a high school, it is definitely not a high school gym. This venue is about 7x the size of all the high school gyms we looked at. You could almost fit 9 full basketball courts inside the room. So this high school worked out size wise but most high school don't have a venue event remotely that large.
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