Most FIRST teams per capita

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by KathieK

You may wish to look at the other thread started last fall concerning number of teams per square mile. I think Connecticut ranked near the top in that listing as well. Sustaining teams becomes an issue when you have a high number of teams in a small geographical area, all competing for the same funding and mentorship. Even simple things like trying to reserve flights for groups out of the same airport on the same days to go to Atlanta become potential problems!

Aw, heck, I don't really care much about this, but teams per unit of area is a pretty poor metric. New York City or LA/Orange County could have ten times the teams per unit area of Alaska and still have an infinitely easier time finding resources. The most useful measure would probably be some measure of economic strength divided by number of teams. Connecticut, for example, has a much larger economy than Montana, which is about a zillion times larger geographically.

I'll leave the details as an exercise for the students.

As for airport scheduling, the larger the economic base, the better served you will be for airports. In Connecticut, this might be a problem if you are all trying to fly out of Hartford, but you could always fly out of La Guardia or JFK, or even Logan.

At least you have major airports handy. Consider the plight of teams in places like Bellingham, Washington, Coos Bay, Oregon, or Red Bluff, California. All of them have to schedule trips just to get to an airport capable of getting a connection through to Atlanta. (Yes, I know. Coos Bay has an airport. To fly to Atlanta they would fly to Portland, and then take a plane which would probably have to make a stop along the way. It's probably a 12-hour trip. I don't think there is a place in New England where a major airport takes longer to get to than driving from Bellingham to SeaTac. You easterners just don't understand distance...) (To not just beat a dead horse, but to beat it and then blow it up -- there are also a lot more choices for flights from major airports than small ones. There might only be one team in Helena, Montana, as a made-up example, but there might only be two flights a day out of there to a hub with connections to Atlanta.)