New District Events for 2013?

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Word on the street is that New England (CT, RI, VT, NH, MA, ME) has been and is looking to go to districts; but at this point I believe the earliest we'll see it would be 2014. I propose the name FiNE (FIRST in New England).

It's actually fairly surprising to me that the NE area has not gone to districts sooner, as the team density in the area and travel distances make a ton of sense.

I've heard the reason it won't happen sooner has to do with contracts for the venues that were signed as multi-year as well as not having the venues for the districts nailed down, but don't hold me to that it's second or third hand.

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

FiNE:
Given that there'd be about 8 districts (146 teams * 2 events/team / 40 teams/event), I would see there being one in SoMaine (Portland <-> Portsmouth), one in "NoNH" (Lebanon <-> Concord), one in SoNH (Nashua <-> Manchester), one in the Boston area, one in the Worcester area, one in the Springfield area, one in the Hartford area, and one in the Bridgeport area. I'm guessing the FiNE championship would host about 50 teams in the Boston <-> Worcester area.

When I was considering this I came up with similar districts and suggested locations.
New Haven (Yale)
Springfield (WNEC)
Eastern CT (Norwich area)
Worcester (WPI)
Boston (BU)
Nashua
Concord
Portland

District Championship would rotate between Manchester, Hartford and Worcester or just be in Worcester based on it's central location.

With New England having 5 regionals planned for next year (NH, CT, Boston, WPI, Maine) it will be interesting to see how many slots are allocated to the region.