UNC Asheville's Wild Ride

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I think a contributing factor to the issue was in NC they have 52 teams but effectively created 160 roster spots when they only needed 104. Teams were bound to gravitate to the 104 that were most convenient for them and Asheville is a pretty incredible city but not one near a lot of existing teams.

I think a lot of it has to do with promoting new teams as well. Western NC as a whole historically hasn't had nearly the amount of teams as the Central and Eastern areas in part because they would have to travel 3+ hours to get to the nearest competition. With the competition in Asheville we have seen a handful of new teams in the West and hopefully that will continue next year. All of that probably wouldn't have been able to happen if there wasn't enough interest in the Asheville competition.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Monochron

I think a lot of it has to do with promoting new teams as well. Western NC as a whole historically hasn't had nearly the amount of teams as the Central and Eastern areas in part because they would have to travel 3+ hours to get to the nearest competition. With the competition in Asheville we have seen a handful of new teams in the West and hopefully that will continue next year. All of that probably wouldn't have been able to happen if there wasn't enough interest in the Asheville competition.

I think that is only partially true. Don't forget that WNC has historically been economically disadvantaged. It's good to see the local colleges, UNCA and WCU, starting to make moves to spread FIRST in the area.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Monochron

I think a lot of it has to do with promoting new teams as well. Western NC as a whole historically hasn't had nearly the amount of teams as the Central and Eastern areas in part because they would have to travel 3+ hours to get to the nearest competition. With the competition in Asheville we have seen a handful of new teams in the West and hopefully that will continue next year. All of that probably wouldn't have been able to happen if there wasn't enough interest in the Asheville competition.

While all of this is true, I don't see why NC FIRST didn't try to push teams into the Asheville event by only running 3 districts and eliminating either Guilford, Wake or CU/JCC. There are not as many teams in Southwest VA as there are in Central VA, but a lot of us hoofed it out to the western part of the state for a travel play instead of relying on two district events in our metro area.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

While all of this is true, I don't see why NC FIRST didn't try to push teams into the Asheville event by only running 3 districts and eliminating either Guilford, Wake or CU/JCC. There are not as many teams in Southwest VA as there are in Central VA, but a lot of us hoofed it out to the western part of the state for a travel play instead of relying on two district events in our metro area.

Hhm, yeah I'm not entirely sure. As a team located 20 minutes from Wake about an hour from both Guilford and CU, it sure it nice
There was an effort made to get more NC teams to Asheville though, Marie was in talks with teams after the registration process (likely when you were asked to move to Asheville) to help them attend as well. I'm not sure how successful it was, but I know that it was a situation that was actively being worked on.

[Jacob Paikoff]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

While all of this is true, I don't see why NC FIRST didn't try to push teams into the Asheville event by only running 3 districts and eliminating either Guilford, Wake or CU/JCC. There are not as many teams in Southwest VA as there are in Central VA, but a lot of us hoofed it out to the western part of the state for a travel play instead of relying on two district events in our metro area.

I believe the original idea was to run 4 32 team events as opposed to 3 40 team events to both try to lessen travel for teams and spread the events out a little bit more. All the other NC events averaged 32 teams. A couple more third plays from NC teams and the number of teams in Asheville wouldn't have been a problem.