New York Districts?

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

I guess I was going off of the assumption the most other regions distribution is a little more continuous than New York. So teams from New Hampshire night not play with teams from Rhode Island, but teams from New Hampshire might play with some teams from Massachusetts, who play with some teams from Connecticut, who play with some teams from Rhode Island. There's no clear line, and the distribution is a little more continuous.

For New York, there is an extremely clear line, and it would probably become even more clear for districts.

That is all true I guess you could call it "Trickle Down Coopertition"?

New England teams are pretty good at intermingling together but there is a reality that we just don't see certain teams minus 1-2 who decide to travel. At our past four district events we've only seen 3 teams from Rhode Island/Connecticut (events 2x MA, and 2x NH).

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

We'd like to prevent any team being "screwed", regardless of where they're from in the state.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

In other districts, teams can travel / be reassigned to help even things out, but due to the geographic constraints here, few teams will travel from one to the other (and the teams that would are already good enough to qualify for DCMP).

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

For all non-selfish reasons, I have to agree that this becomes the better option for most teams in NY.
The other similar option that benefits the international teams is to have upstate NY become a district and leave NY as is. Maybe even add another regional event to NYC or LI.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

For all non-selfish reasons, I have to agree that this becomes the better option for most teams in NY.
The other similar option that benefits the international teams is to have upstate NY become a district and leave NY as is. Maybe even add another regional event to NYC or LI.

Upstate New York/Western Pennsylvania seems to make alot of sense.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I want to specifically emphasize the last point here. A point earned in Long Island and a point earned in Rochester would not really even mean the same thing. I don't think it's unfair to say Finger Lakes is typically a more competitive event than Long Island. In other districts, teams can travel / be reassigned to help even things out, but due to the geographic constraints here, few teams will travel from one to the other (and the teams that would are already good enough to qualify for DCMP).

I really think that two districts, or one district and one region merged into the other, is the way to go here. I would even be fine if NYC / LI teams could opt to get real district points from events in the surrounding 3 districts.

A point is a point no matter where it was earned. Either way the distribution of points is pretty much equivalent to the relative performance of the teams at a given event. Yes some events are more competitive than others but it does average out a bit because teams attend two events and there is a different mix of teams. Yes because of geography you will find a number of teams that attend the same two district events but there are also unique teams at those two events. For some teams different weeks work out better and for others they do want to travel and provide that experience to the students that may not get it otherwise. All told the points system does a good job of sending the best teams to the DCMP. Having a larger district does a better job of this.

If you want to talk about the distances being restrictive see the PNW district and my post near the beginning of this thread showing how much greater of an area we cover out here. I know that many parents in NYC may not have cars but how do other teams travel to their state championships? Does a football/basketball/baseball ect team decline their invitation to their respective state championships because parents do not have cars or does the team take a school bus?

For the fun of it I looked up the NYSPHSAA's championships.

For basketball it was located in Glen Falls this year. According to Google maps it is a 3:30 drive from NYC or a 4:30 by public transportation. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/New+...7837!1m0?hl=en Yes I know that there are problems with google maps and their times but for someone outside of the area they are the best available info.

For Football it was in Syracuse https://www.google.com/maps/dir/New+...3.036187?hl=en even further away in both distance and time from NYC yet still with a public transportation option, though it seems to me a school bus would be how a football team would get there.

Originally Posted by Jimmy Nichols

Each district receives $1000 as a re-grant from FIRST for every team that registers. I assume PNW must tell FIRST to apply that $1000 towards the teams registration fees vs. sending it to the District. That would be a choice that the district makes given that they have the funds to support their annual expenses. Otherwise all teams pay $5K per FIRST's website. I don't have any contacts in PNW to confirm this, but since I'm involved in both Regional planning and District conversations with FIRST, this is my educated assumption.

Just trying to prevent mis-information about the fees from getting out there.

See above for how the billing works in PNW FIRST it is unique among the current Districts though the net is the same in that the initial registration fee for veteran teams is still $5000 and for rookie teams it is still $6000.

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

I don't know that the dust has settled enough to say that the IN district was successful in all aspects of the reasons for the move to the District system.

As far as the running of the events and the fact that many teams got to play more matches and travel less then yes by all indications it certainly was a success.

The other reason for the switch to the District system is financial, running Regionals is very expensive and unsustainable as growth continues. So the question is was the IN district able to lower the total cost of the events vs what it was for the Regional it replaced. How does in-kind donations from AndyMark play into the total costs. For example I know that in the past AndyMark has stored and shipped fields for off-season events. So is AndyMark providing the receiving, storage and shipping functions for the IN district? Will a NYC district be able to find a company willing to do the same for them? Will they need to rent a warehouse like PNW does or use a company like Pods to handle the storage like MAR does. Do not get me wrong I'm not knocking anything that AndyMark may have done to make the IN district happen, just questioning if another mini-district could be financially successful without a company like AndyMark stepping up. There are economies of scale.

I know that the unified district points system was designed to allow the portability of district points for the long term. I suspect that in a few years teams will be able to travel to another district and bring the points earned there back home with them, assuming that it is not the 3rd play chronologically.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mr V

A point is a point no matter where it was earned.

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

[Dominick Ferone]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

To build on this maybe after an event do a multiplier to the district points they earn based on the overall opr divided by the number of teams or something like that. Some regionals when the top 2 teams banned together, the winner is already know at this point. Where other regionals have the upsets come from a lower alliance like FLR had the 7th seed win.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

It seems to me that they are not very different teams. In the two lists I see 4 of the same teams on both lists and 1 unique team per list.

With the way the district points system is set up the points earned at DCMP are multiplied by 3 to determine who moves on to CMP. That means that the effects of the relative competitiveness of the district events are lessened to a degree.

I believe a greater number of smaller district events should lessen the difference in competitiveness between the district events. It certainly won't eliminate it though.

Combined with the way DCMP points work it should still result in the top teams moving on, but not eliminate the variability caused near the cutoff points line for the mid range teams.

No it certainly isn't a perfect system but I believe that it is pretty good based on my experiences in the PNW district. In our district we have one highly dense area, two minor areas and the rest of the teams spread pretty wide.

For reference here is a map of the distribution of teams. http://batchgeo.com/map/70d940e318d9...b583b66cde4d5c

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mr V

It seems to me that they are not very different teams. In the two lists I see 4 of the same teams on both lists and 1 unique team per list.

With the way the district points system is set up the points earned at DCMP are multiplied by 3 to determine who moves on to CMP. That means that the effects of the relative competitiveness of the district events are lessened to a degree.

So, seeing 20% difference between lists is fine? So, in NE that'd be 12 teams that probably deserve to be at DCMP that wouldn't make it because other teams competed at weaker events and earned more points.

[PVCpirate]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

So, seeing 20% difference between lists is fine? So, in NE that'd be 12 teams that probably deserve to be at DCMP that wouldn't make it because other teams competed at weaker events and earned more points.

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. My question is, if you were in charge of a New York District involving the whole state, how would you propose accounting for this?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. My question is, if you were in charge of a New York District involving the whole state, how would you propose accounting for this?

Hadn't thought of how to fix it. NE is less of an issue, there seems to be a fair bit of intermingling and I know FIM has similar intermingling. Fairly certain MAR is decent too. PNW/IN I haven't looked at in enough detail.

The obvious would be apply a correction fact to points earned at a district. How to compute that? Idk, I've been poking around with the Simple Rating System that's fairly popular in the NFL. That might be a solution. The other option would be give an incentive to attend events with more diversity. However, both of these are nonstarters for various reasons. (SRS is more difficult than a numeric sort, and incentivizing other events is nonstarter for political reasons)

[smistthegreat]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. \snip

For those of you wondering if New York's two isolated groups have an appreciable performance gap, I did some rudimentary calculations. All OPR values were the maximum OPR values for this year, taken from Ed Law's spreadsheet.

Upstate Mean Max OPR: 25.1
Downstate Mean Max OPR: 15.9

Attached is a plot of the OPR distributions for each region. The distributions are shaped similarly, but upstate appears to have a +10 OPR advantage vs downstate.

Edit: Sorry for the huge photo. Here's a link to the image itself: http://i.imgur.com/jka78Nv.png

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Mr V

I don't know that the dust has settled enough to say that the IN district was successful in all aspects of the reasons for the move to the District system.

As far as the running of the events and the fact that many teams got to play more matches and travel less then yes by all indications it certainly was a success.

Yeah, that's what I was going by. I'm not knowledgeable enough with their specifics to comment any more deeply on the situation.

[Dominick Ferone]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)

I am going to have to disagree with this. Being from around your area me and my roommate get back to school in about 4 hours and we pass Albany on the way.(We are an hour east of Syracuse and and hour west of Albany).
When driving up what takes the longest is getting through the city and the LIE, when on the thruway it's not bad. To avoid problems in the city you just need to leave during non rush hour times.

[PaulDavis1968]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

This thread is becoming a repeated argument but whatever.

It Comes down to does everyone suffer or do 1/3 of the teams suffer.

I admit upstate teams get screwed but they are only 1/3 of the teams and as a minority that's someone that has to be done.

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)

Only about 5 teams would actually benefit from it being in Albany. So the rest of the 150ish would have to all travel. Yea it's a little cheaper for upstate teams but that doesn't account for saved money by not having to have cars or buses accessible.. In a place like Albany you need a bus or a car to go to eat back to the hotel and to and from the venue. In nyc everything is so close that you can usually walk through all those if not taking the the subway which is affordable.

With that in mind it will most likely cost the same for upstate teams to come down to the city regardless of the added hotel costs.

It is indeed a 4 1/2 hour drive to LI from Binghamton. Having done it many times.