New York Districts?

[smistthegreat]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Rough enough for my interest. Would it be crazy talk to suggest NYC/Long Island as its own district?

Splitting New York into upstate and downstate as separate districts is an attractive solution for a number of ways, for us upstate folks especially. One of the major issues is finding venues for the downstate district events, especially in the city itself.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Putting ny in one district is crazy. To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours not to mention there is close to 60 teams in nyc and 45 in long island even though geographically we are on top of each other.

How long do you think it takes to drive from one end of PNW to the other? From the Upper Peninsula to Detroit?

How clustered do you think teams are around Detroit?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours...

Why would that matter? Even if a district competition were to be held at one of those extreme locations, a team at the other extreme wouldn't be forced to go there.

It would indeed be crazy to put a district championship at one corner of a region, instead of making it more centrally located.

[smistthegreat]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

How long do you think it takes to drive from one end of PNW to the other? From the Upper Peninsula to Detroit?

How clustered do you think teams are around Detroit?

The issue with New York isn't that it's a big state in general. It's that there are two pretty significant clusters of teams: one in the city, and one in Rochester, which are prohibitively far from one another to ask any significant portion of teams to travel from one to the other. It would be analogous to having a bunch of teams clustered around Detroit, but then another significant cluster 7 or 8 hours away.

There's also the fact that the downstate teams are geographically much closer to most of MAR and most of NE than the upstate teams.

I believe that the most likely scenario is for Western/upstate New York to form it's own district system soon, and leave the city and the island in regional limbo for another year or two.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

The biggest challenges in a NYC+LI district would be the lack of (inexpensive) venues - you'd need 5 or 6 events, and finding high schools with the capacity to hold an event would prove difficult. Furthermore, where would the field be stored when not in use? NYC real estate isn't exactly easily available or cheap...

The NYC area poses a lot of unique problems to the district transition, which need some innovative solutions before they start thinking seriously about transitioning.

Eastern long island is farms.

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Back to the other discussion.

When we do nyc we take the train and a district van to move our stuff. It costs us for the van but the train is payed for by students. That costs us 500ish. When we do sbpli we pay nothing as we get a school bus with a wheel chair lift.

However if we were out of nyc it would cost us upwards of 3k just for transportation.

I lived in nyc for 12 years and currently live in long island. Expecting teams around here especially the manhatten brooklyn and Queens teams to go out of train distance is a bigger deal then you think.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Easy to get is not the same as cheap. If you can find 5 or 6 appropriately sized venues, and run the whole event for under $25,000 (see page 19), please get in touch with some planning committies.

The reason the majority of district events are held in high schools is not lack of availability of colleges - it's cost. The college events you see are funded in part by massive donations. It's a pretty tall order to rely on them entirely.

I'm not saying venue selection is impossible, but it'll definitely be harder than you seem to think it is.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Easy to get is not the same as cheap. If you can find 5 or 6 appropriately sized venues, and run the whole event for under $25,000 (see page 19), please get in touch with some planning committies.

The reason the majority of district events are held in high schools is not lack of availability of colleges - it's cost. The college events you see are funded in part by massive donations. It's a pretty tall order to rely on them entirely.

I'm not saying venue selection is impossible, but it'll definitely be harder than you seem to think it is.

High schools alone there aren't too many but there are huge schools

Townsend haris
Stuyvesent
Brooklyn tech
Are a bunch of high schools with huge facilities with big teams along with being in 3 different bouroughs. In long island most schools could host an event but 329 (patchouge medford) comes to mind immediately. I've been to their school multiple times and with 2 giant adjacent gyms im sure they could manage something. Half hollow hills also hosts an off season event every year although i don't know if it is quite big enough for a district event. I believe 358 has a large school along with long wood most likely being a spot (the superintendent is a huge supporter of first and runs something with sbpli)

With the hundreds of teams in the area comes hundreds of schools and many of them are quite giant.

[Kevin Leonard]

According to Google Maps, it takes about 5 hours to drive from the top of Long Island to Albany. That would be the longest drive any team would have to take to get to a centrally located state championship.

Montauk to Albany: 5 Hours
Manhattan to Albany: 3 Hours
Rochester to Albany: 3 Hours
Buffalo to Albany: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes

This doesn't seem that bad, and with some help from sponsors and other teams, I'm sure most teams that qualify for NYCMP that want to attend NYCMP would be able to. As the NYFIRST community, we could figure out a solution to that problem.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Eastern long island is farms.

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Back to the other discussion.

When we do nyc we take the train and a district van to move our stuff. It costs us for the van but the train is payed for by students. That costs us 500ish. When we do sbpli we pay nothing as we get a school bus with a wheel chair lift.

However if we were out of nyc it would cost us upwards of 3k just for transportation.

I lived in nyc for 12 years and currently live in long island. Expecting teams around here especially the manhatten brooklyn and Queens teams to go out of train distance is a bigger deal then you think.

There are trains from NYC to Albany. There's even one that ends about a mile from the Times Union Center (which would be a likely venue if we were able to secure it for this time of year).

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

According to Google Maps, it takes about 5 hours to drive from the top of Long Island to Albany. That would be the longest drive any team would have to take to get to a centrally located state championship.

Montauk to Albany: 5 Hours
Manhattan to Albany: 3 Hours
Rochester to Albany: 3 Hours
Buffalo to Albany: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes

This doesn't seem that bad, and with some help from sponsors and other teams, I'm sure most teams that qualify for NYCMP that want to attend NYCMP would be able to. As the NYFIRST community, we could figure out a solution to that problem.



There are trains from NYC to Albany. There's even one that ends about a mile from the Times Union Center (which would be a likely venue if we were able to secure it for this time of year).

A train from nyc to Albany costs $42 each way each day. That's 84 dollars per person not to mention that its a 2 and a half hour ride(that's 5 hours of train time per day) it's a logistical nightmare. A nyc event at the javits center (without ftc fll and jr fll you could fit multiple fields and hundreds of teams in there) would make more Sense for the masses but isn't the greatest for the upstate teams even if they are the technical minority.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by Mr V

Most of the teams in the outlying areas in the PNW district have very, very limited resources and they have to drive 2 hours to get to anything.

Example, Any team on the east side of Washington (though we have the luxury of having the DCMP close this year) and Oregon, especially Oregon.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by EricDrost

It would force MAR to move the district championship closer to the geographic center than out in the middle of NOWHERE in Pennsylvania.

If there are any viable options for this, please let me know...

Man I feel bad for that one team far up north...

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Hallry

If there are any viable options for this, please let me know...

Man I feel bad for that one team far up north...

That's 229 at Clarkson. While it's not great, they already travel large distances to make it to both of their events. This year they attended NYC and TVR.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

That's 229 at Clarkson.

TIL where Clarkson is. For some reason I always thought it was near Rochester. Thanks.

[smistthegreat]

I was on mobile earlier, but I finally have the time to type up something a little more thorough. There are a few options currently available to New York.

1. The entire state forms one district. As discussed in this thread, if DCMP is not in NYC, it puts a huge strain on the city teams. If DCMP is in the city, upstate teams have a bit of a travel issue, but it's certainly possible. Another possible issue is finding enough places to put district competitions. You would have Rochester, Troy, maybe Buffalo or Syracuse, and then 4 or 5 events in the city/on the island.

2. Upstate New York forms one, Indiana-sized district. District events in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Troy, with DCMP basically taking the place of the current FLR. In this case, downstate would be left in a bit of a pickle.

3. Western New York joins with Ohio, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. Again, this only solves the problem for the upstate teams.

[Matt_Boehm_329]

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

I was on mobile earlier, but I finally have the time to type up something a little more thorough. There are a few options currently available to New York.

[snip]
2. Upstate New York forms one, Indiana-sized district. District events in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Troy, with DCMP basically taking the place of the current FLR. In this case, downstate would be left in a bit of a pickle.
[snip]

If you had upstate NY as its own district NYC and LI combined could easily field enough teams for their own as well.