Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

I'm not so sure that the "rural teams" in Minnesota don't have volunteers to contribute. Being that I'm from one of those rural teams, and I work with many more of them within our local hub, I know they have volunteers to contribute. They just have no incentive to do so right now. Now obviously there are smaller teams out there, and teams that would be incapable of providing volunteers, but there are many more teams out there with enough people to provide many volunteers. I would argue the latter outnumber the former.

When I think "rural" I don't think "Becker." You guys are certainly more rural than New Brighton, but still what I would consider suburban (subrurban-lite?). I don't mean to devalue you or Becker- you guys do some awesome stuff! I just have a slightly different definition that I think will clear up the point on rural teams.

When I talk about rural teams who don't have the resources to provide volunteers, I'm talking about schools like Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig which had an enrollment of 197 in 2014 compared to Becker's ~800. Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig is is in Bena, MN, which has a population of 118 compared to Becker's 4,645.

They actually did have an FRC team from 2010 through 2013. They were one of my favorite teams back when I was an inspector because I could tell how much work they put into getting a viable robot put together and down to the Twin Cities.