District Feasibility/Potential

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dodar

CF: Daytona Beach straight across through Ocala down to Sarasota across to Vero Beach.

SF: Below that line through Sarasota across to Vero Beach.

And why would it be silly to consider the central part of Florida as Central Florida?

Maybe for the reasons I WROTE? I was looking for the optimal location to place a state championship based on number of teams who could comfortably commute to it. As someone who has repeatedly done he Brandon -> Orlando commute that is BARELY reasonable to do round trip in a day. From Sarasota to Orlando... ha no thanks.

[dodar]

1 hour drives are comfortably close. Take away the Central Florida teams with longer than 1 hour drives and you still have 28-30. Thats still more than the total considered in South Florida total; and then you can take out 2-4 teams on the OP's picture that are on the west coast of South Florida. When I was a student on 1592, we drove over from Cocoa and drove home everyday; that was an hour both ways if the traffic was good.

And just saying this as well, I was a mentor on the team the first year the South Florida regional happened and when we saw how expensive hotels in South Florida were, we had to stay like almost an hour away just to keep the hotel costs reasonable. You can find cheaper ones in Orlando(than Miami/Boca Raton/Ft. Lauderdale) and even cheaper ones within 25-30 minutes of Orlando.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dodar

And just saying this as well, I was a mentor on the team the first year the South Florida regional happened and when we saw how expensive hotels in South Florida were, we had to stay like almost an hour away just to keep the hotel costs reasonable. You can find cheaper ones in Orlando(than Miami/Boca Raton/Ft. Lauderdale) and even cheaper ones within 25-30 minutes of Orlando.

I didn't find the hotels much worse than DC... But that's also an important factor that I couldn't determine at first glance. I'd have to run a few searches.

And, without traffic and doing my usual speeding Brandon -> Orlando is over an hour. If I'm coming from west of me that means I'm on I4 through the 275 junction which takes 20 minutes on the best of days... I'm not seeing your point.

[GaryVoshol]

On a "build it and they will come" theme ...

In Michigan we have only 1 head ref who also was a head ref for the old regionals. The rest of us stepped up over the past 5 years to fill the positions.

We also have many more referees than we had in the past. And now some of them are wondering what it will take to become head refs - the answer basically being, more districts! We had 7 head refs last season to work 11 district events; one of them ended up not being a head ref at all due to an assigning mixup.

I think I saw a different LRI at each of the 3 district events I worked this year.

Where we do overwork the volunteers is the FTA position. We are fortunate to have a very dedicated crew of FTA's and FFTA's who end up working every or almost every week. But they love it!