2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[treffk]

Originally Posted by Donut

The sooner we get everyone to Districts the better off all of FIRST will be. I hope they come up with a good system to handle those of us in remote areas (maybe read some of the threads on CD for a few ideas ) but I'm willing to be inconvenienced on what competitions we can attend short term for the huge economic benefits. Plus I think forcing the system may be the best way to spur growth in the areas that haven't seen it.

I do agree with the other comment, determining the districts is not an easy task. As you have sort of touched there are some remote areas. This is caused both by high concentrations of teams in certain states and by low numbers of FRC teams in a particular state.Between Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa there were 17 teams for the 2013 game. Add Colorado, Kansas and Missiouri to that number and you are only up to 147 teams. Then if you include New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas you reach 218, this is 7 more teams than in Michigan.

That is a huge expanse of land to get a high quanity of teams. How do you arrange the the district competitions let alone determine where the "State" tournament is without making it to where certain teams have to raise a large amount more than normal to even compete? I'm not saying that some of these teams don't already have to travel a distance to get to a regional but that what if it would cause them to have to raise more money than a normal season.

I feel that because of this, as much as districts currently seem like the best thing for everyone FIRST has not grown enough in certain areas to make it a viable solution for everyone.