pic: Districts in Minnesota Flyer

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by DareDad

My point being that it's not a Minnesota thing. Minnesota has had phenomenal growth the past few years, greater than the rest of the US, but it's not because the state is throwing money at creating teams.

As I said upthread, the growth is organic, not because one major entity is pushing a grow at any cost strategy.

Not the state. The Fortune 500 companies and other generous corporate sponsors in the Twin Cities and throughout the state. This is nothing but commendable on the sponsors' parts, and has also been a major focus of the RPC since the beginning (connecting these sponsors and their grant money with new teams). We've seen enormous benefits and phenomenal growth. But many teams have lacked the mentor support and mature infrastructure to do well. It's not a novel idea that growing very very quickly will have unintended side effects and shortcomings.