Frank Answers Fridays: Expanded Championship Qualification

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by mwmac

However, I would posit that tripling the team population in any state within 3 or 4 years would raise serious concerns about team sustainability.

To address this single statement, as I don't have much to say concerning sparsely populated area, which MN certainly isn't... Team sustainability is certainly a serious concern, for all regions. It doesn't matter if your region has had the same teams for the past 10 years, or if you added 50 new teams last year - there are so many reasons teams stop that you have to constantly be addressing sustainability and focusing on what the teams in your area need to keep going.

That said, rapid growth does not mean you have sustainability issues. MN is a great example:
Teams in MN by year (assuming I didn't miss any):

Year     2005  2006  2007  2008  2009  2010  2011  2012  2013  2014
New         1     1    14    38    30    26    27    23    29    14
Dropped     0     0     0     0     3     3     1     1     2     9
Total       1     2    16    54    81   104   130   152   179   184

As you can see, over the past decade we've had very rapid growth with very little attrition. It takes a lot of work to make happen, but the results are amazing!