New District Events for 2013?

[Lil' Lavery]

I find some of the objections to district events a little strange given what MAR has done this season. Particularly states/regions claiming they need more regionals before they move to a district system. MAR only has 99 teams and the area only encompassed two existing regionals (Philadelphia and New Jersey). Granted, both events are very old and the volunteers and teams in the region have had a long time to get acclimated from FIRST. But the region certainly doesn't have the team or volunteer population of many of the other areas, and relied heavily on volunteer crossover between events and drawing volunteers from other nearby regionals (New York, Chesapeake, DC, etc.).

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Although it seems to be against what others are saying on this thread, I for one don't really want a district system for California. It seems to me like it would just make it a lot harder to get to Championships, and make us miss a lot more days of school (two/three district events, district champs, and then real Championships).

Personally, I really like they way things are now.

Dawgma missed a grand total of two days of school to attend three MAR events this season. Each district is only two days long, and some of them are Saturday/Sunday. We lucked out by having day 1 of Hatboro fall over an in-service (no school) day, so we didn't miss any school until Thursday and Friday of this week for MAR Championship.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

I'm not sure if Ontario would go to a District model just yet, seeing that FIRST Canada is pretty set on expanding FIRST across Canada right now. Montreal is going to be a BIG regional next year (their growth has been phenomenal), and I think the focus should be to develop FIRST in Western Canada (one day I could see Calgary as a powerhouse region for FIRST).

I don't see how those are mutually exclusive.

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

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

It would be semi-ironic to have Dean Guceri's "new" university (WPI) host the New England region championship when his departure from Drexel was one of the big impetus for the creation of MAR (due to the additional cost of the Philadelphia regional once Drexel was no longer an option).

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

MAR district events are all Saturday-Sunday so kids miss no school here...

Edit: Sorry for the double post, guys!

Only the New Jersey events were Saturday-Sunday. Hatboro-Horsham and Chestnut Hill were Friday-Saturday.