FIRST Chesapeake Districts

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

If I'm reading his post correctly, for the sake of program growth in underrepresented areas. I still think having events near population centers is more important.

Originally Posted by TDav540

Yes that was what I was going for.

I agree with you in a general sense that this is important. However, in this case, it isn't like Central VA doesn't have a large number of teams; it's the second largest in team density.

See, here's my disconnect from that viewpoint. The DC metro area still has potential for growth as well. There's only 13 teams in DC for more than 40 high schools in the city. Not to mention the massive population advantage DC (both as a city and metro area) has over Richmond. Putting the DCMP in the DC metro area still allows for plenty of growth in the Chesapeake District, as well as serving the greatest utility towards existing teams and providing a venue with the more exposure.

Originally Posted by TDav540

Regardless, there is no reason (besides convenience and a little break) that a Week 5 championship couldn't occur. Most teams in the state will be playing in Week 4 events anyway.

Compressing the district schedule down that far would make finding venues significantly more challenging, and make the competition season incredibly fast paced/strenuous. I would definitely not recommend a week 5 DCMP. MAR has also seen significantly lower DCMP attendance acceptance rates when there's not a week between the final districts and DCMP.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

The calendar has opened up for those weeks in the past, and the event was on the VCU calendar until FIRST quietly pushed out that the 2015 kickoff would fall on January 9th, pushing the whole season back a week. The dates would be a Week 6 event any other year (like next year). And unless circumstances have changed, finances are not an issue at VCU.

Changing to a district format means, by default, that circumstances have changed. Funding has to be allocated to all sorts of things that previously were not the responsibility of the district. Not to mention, just because a regional existed at a venue previously does not automatically mean is was a financially healthy scenario (look into the MAR presentations when the MAR district was announced regarding the cost of the venues for Philadelphia and Trenton).