Hey CD,
I’ve been thinking about the future of FIRST, which appears to be an all district format. What I’m not sure about is how the districts would be divided. There are some obvious areas that would be separated from others (New England, California, Canada) but some areas where the lines of division are less obvious. So what do you think all the divisions will be in the future, and what states/countries will be in each district?
Thanks! Jay
When FIRST gets to that critical mass point, I see it looking like this: 50 state districts, 6 Canadian Districts, 1 Mexican District, 1 Israeli District, 1 Oceanic District, and probably a few more unknown districts(atleast unkown for now).
And then you would have like a West Region Championship, Northwest Region Championship, Great Plains Region Championship, Southwest Region Championship, Great Lakes Region Championship, Mid-Atlantic Championship, Southeast Championship, Mid-America Championship(States between Southeast, Great Lakes, and Mid-Atlantic), Northeast Region Championship West Canada Region Championship, East Canada Region Championship, Oceanic Region Championship, Mexico Regional Championship, Israel Region Championship, unknown Region Champs.
Then, all those would feed into the World Champs just like hwo FiM and MAR do now. This major team growth would also make champs grow to 8 Divisions and possibly 640-720 teams total or 80-90 teams per division.
That, to me, is FIRST in like 20-30 years.
This is a wonderful concept, but wouldn’t be very balanced. For example, states like California, Texas or New York have a very large number of teams (and people) compared to the more rural areas of the country. This already puts big limits on certain areas (Idaho just recently surpassed the number of teams needed to host one regional, and hasn’t yet been able to plan one), and would only be harder to work into a district system. States with large numbers of teams (Like Michigan, who pioneered the district system) could feasibly convert to districts in the near future, but aside from the densely populated areas of the country, I doubt we’ll be seeing districts as a widespread FIRST system any time soon.
Not soon, no; but when the teams per area gets to a high enough quantity it will. So, as FIRST moves toward the complete district system, some states will become left out for a little bit as more and more join the district brotherhood.
When that happens (Which will be really amazing for FIRST), do you think that some states may need to be further divided, or will their Championships send more teams to Worlds?
Where do you think the next few district areas will be?
Sounds like a compromise would need to be made.
I dont think states themselves will be parted off. I think having it states as a whole would be better. I think at first, the regions will send different amounts of teams to Worlds depending on the size of the team in the state. But after a while FIRST will have to designate a specific number across the board for each Region Championship; by that I mean an equal number for each Region.
Minnestoa, then California, then the Northeast, then Texas, than Northwest. After that, I have no idea. lol
I like your vision for growth, but I don’t think we’ll ever be organized quite that way. Two main reasons:
I’m not saying us on the MO side of GKC can’t, or won’t, be able to recover from not seeing the KS teams, but we really wouldn’t want to (I don’t think, anyway; this isn’t a discussion I’ve had with other teams in the area). However the district boundaries are drawn, they have to keep this in mind.
I don’t think it’s as simple as letting teams attend events in other districts; you set up a potential issue with how points are earned towards the District Championship. Maybe those rivalries just transfer to the “super district” or “regional” championships, but that just doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t have a good answer – I’ve thought about this, but no where near enough – but it’s one of many questions that are going to have to be addressed.
I know there is a thread floating around that discusses this, but who likes thread revivals anyway? 
My personal opinion is there is no way to divide all of FRC into regions unless there is explosive growth in certain areas, which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Eventually enough areas will be “sectioned off” into the islands that the current district models have that travel for many teams/volunteers, who are left out, will be insane. At this point everyone will go to a points based system and the points will be used for championship spots. In this scenario there would be no “state” championships or borders because how could you divide those in less team/volunteer dense areas into regions without crazy travel? The issue with this is awards like chairman’s and EI.
Any model for the current island type district areas would have to have fluid borders so you don’t get things like the Western U.P. in Michigan competing in the L.P. when Wisconsin/Minnesota is quite a bit closer.
Eventually I can see something like little league baseball does, but that is way down the road.
Why do we need to draw lines at all? If the regular season has a couple of destination regionals which allow a one competition shot at the championship for teams that for whatever reason cannot handle the district system (most obviously because of location), the rest can all be districts. Any team may attend any district event and earn points there. Then we host a number of championships. Everyone globally who is over a certain points threshold qualifies for the intermediate championship stage and they register for the championship of their choice, preference would be given to local teams, but there would be a little wiggle room so most everyone could select a championship of their choice. Those qualified from the regionals and the championships go to worlds.
I personally like the current regional system, it’s cool to be able to go to other distance places to compete, and with a district system in all 50 states it would get rather confusing.
As long as all district events play the same number of matches per team, under the same game rules, there is no reason points wouldn’t be able to transfer between regions.
An original intent of district events in Michigan was to open extra spots at events (after each team had registered for their 2) to outside teams, this was not allowed. Later, when MAR was formed, both sides (FiM and MAR) wanted to allow teams to go to districts in the other region, this was not allowed either. However, as MAR events are extremely similar to FiM events (same number of matches per team), there would be no reason (from the point system and rankings perspective) to prevent an FiM or MAR team from attending the other region’s event and receiving points. Even if FiM and MAR used different point values in their point systems, it would be extremely easy to apply the FiM points to a MAR event for an FiM team attending a MAR event to be properly ranked in the FiM rankings (the same goes for a MAR team attending an FiM event).
Indiana is hopefully going to the district model either this year or next gonna be interesting
Or maybe you do like randomized groups at the beginning of the year with every team in FIRST. Then, after you are put into a group, you play through a normal year of FIRST accumulating points like in a district but not from anywhere specifically, just from where you compete. And then at the end of the regular season, the top X teams from each group go to Worlds. Like say 1592, 1986, 1983, 175 could all end up in the same group(there would be more than 4 but those are the 4 that came to mind first) but 1592 plays at Orlando, 1986 at GKC, 1983 at Spokane, and 175 at Boston; say they all win the regional undefeated, then each team would have the same number of “group points” towards getting that slot at Worlds.
Interesting. I’m not sure I like competing for a slot at CMP with teams I’ll never see, but I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand just because of that. Having teams in different groups competing at the same event would make for some really “interesting” politics. Possibly even more interesting than what already goes on. :rolleyes:
Im curious as to why you think that? The thought process behind that, was that this formula for making it to Worlds would put all the burden on your team’s ability to play the game and understand the alliance selection to allow you to play the game to the best of your ability.This would almost entirely erase the feeling teams will have about competing in the elimination with teams that arelady own a slot at Worlds. In this setup, every match you play alters not only your chance of making it but pretty much every other team in FIRST. This allows for each team to quantify each match to an even greater magnitude.
I pulled the below division off the NEFIRST blog. I believe this was done a few years ago so things will probably change but it at leasts let you see some ideas of how districts could be divided.
That’s a VERY cool way of doing it, thanks for sharing!