Districts in Texas proposal sent to FIRST

[ahartnet]

Originally Posted by ASD20

Basically, I am trying to say that the change in travel burden will, at a minimum, probably not be quite as bad as you think, if not make things easier for a lot of teams.

I agree that there will be several more competitions. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than the required 7. I also think that the travel burden will be easier for some teams (Many teams that used to only be able to do 1 event now being able to easily attend 2 district competitions within their home towns of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, or Houston, and maybe Lubbock with little to no cost increase) But I will be surprised if any pop up outside of Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. The team density outside of any of those cities just doesn't justify having a district competition anywhere else, and I don't think anyone has experience running district events outside of those 5 cities. So I think for several teams, more competitions available just doesn't help, and requiring attendance at 2 district competitions may prove to be an insurmountable financial burden. I'm not sure how many teams are in west texas (I wish there was a google map with a dot for every team in texas, but I don't want to take the time to make that happen), but for a team in El Paso the two closest cities that have event experience are Lubbock (5.5 hrs away) and San Antonio (7.5 hrs away). If the point of districts is to have two competitions ideally within driving distance to eliminate the need for a hotel, then that's just not possible with a sustainable team density for the foreseeable future.

All that said - I'm strongly for districts. I think it helps a significant number of teams, helps the teams of Texas from a world champs standpoint, and I'm hopeful that the negative impact to teams will be non-existent or mitigate-able. I'm just think/hope that Texas districts is a set up to function a little different than existing models.