Michigan, be honest, how is the district model?

[Basel A]

A few notes no one has picked up yet, I think:

-It's more tiring on volunteers. From 2008 to 2009, Michigan went from 3 events to 6. Roughly double the volunteer-events needed. Even if districts don't do full-day thursdays, it's an increase and more spread out.

-While there is less interaction with outside teams, that results in more interaction with inside teams. When you see the same team at 2-4 events (even 5, possibly) in a season, there's more camaraderie. The end result is greater cooperation and fewer failing teams.

-The group of teams headed to the Championship is more well-rounded and chosen more fairly. The point system will often send deserving finalist-captains to the CMP, who are completely left out in a regional system.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Basel A

-It's more tiring on volunteers. From 2008 to 2009, Michigan went from 3 events to 6. Roughly double the volunteer-events needed. Even if districts don't do full-day thursdays, it's an increase and more spread out.

I'm not sure how many people outside of MI know this, but each team is required to provide two volunteers for both days of each event that they attend. I'm sure that we all understand why this is required, but my team struggled to find two people to volunteer for our away event this year (West MI/GVSU), and I'm sure we weren't the only ones. Having two districts each week (with the exception of Week 2 - Waterford) also tended to spread out the experienced volunteers between events.

[mesamb1]

I hear alot of talk of people from mi complaining about the lack of out of area at their regional, but I would be curious to hear from the people who attend the New Jersey Regional and New York City Regional about how much diversity they see at their regional now. When our team went to peachtree regional we saw mostly the same teams every year, so much so you thought of them as neighbors.
My suspicion, these regional are already in high enough demand locally that the teams don't see many outside teams there now, but I don't know(the only regionals I go to are in places where iced tea only comes sweet).
If this is the case, limiting competition to the districts wouldn't bring earth shattering change to your competitors.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by mesamb1

... I would be curious to hear from the people who attend the New Jersey Regional and New York City Regional about how much diversity they see at their regional now.

We ran those numbers (it was a group effort) after registration closed that gave the % of away teams at each Regional.
About a third at both NJ and NYC were teams that had other "home" Regionals. You can check the preceding posts in that thread to follow the discussion. It doesn't necessarily mean that the same teams aren't always showing up.

The last column gives an idea of the turnover rate (or team freshness?) experienced by each Regional year-to-year, that includes rookies.
That's probably your best measure of the amount of new & different teams mixing each Regional up.

Those numbers aren't final because a few teams were still being moved around between events, but that's the bulk of them.
Also the criteria of what an away team is, is talked about inside the spreadsheet attached to that post.

[mesamb1]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

We ran those numbers (it was a group effort) after registration closed that gave the % of away teams at each Regional.
About a third at both NJ and NYC were teams that had other "home" Regionals.

That is a lot of diversity that would be lost, much more then I would have thought. Thank you for taking the time to run those numbers