It’s been a few years and I had been meaning to update my NY Team heatmap.
For reference, the 2019 heatmap.
Now for the 2023 season map.
The pin in Nassau covers both the Long Island 1 and 2 Regionals.
The difference in the precovid - postcovid NY:
- The loss of the CNY Regional and the Hudson Valley Regional. (which is returning for 2024)
- 2019 had 178 teams compared to 141 in 23.
- The 5 Boroughs and Long Island went from 104 down to 84 teams. (cutting off upstate vs downstate here, as now anything north of the city is covered by upstate NY first.)
- Upstate went from 74 down to 57 teams.
Some notes on the post covid:
- 43 teams have folded since 2020.
- 6 teams returned in 2023
- A few teams registered and never competed (some had placeholder numbers as they became offshoots of teams.)
Some returning/offshoot teams includes:
- 424 (former 340 members)
- 426 (came from 395?, and registered in 2020 for the Hawaii regional?)
- 4860 (Former 5202 members? unsure where else they could have gotten a 4000 team number from?)
By my estimate from 2022 to 2023, NY saw 5 teams leave, 6 teams return, and 5 new teams (3 rookies and 2 offshoots).
After registration closes for 2024 I will make an updated map to see how changes for NY as it slowly continues to regrow since covid hindered many teams.
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Being in one of the counties that has 1 team (broome) is rough. No one to practice with without significant travel, no shared practice space, etc.
Another issue I have seen is regional destinations. No close regional means being in a hotel for all of our events which is expensive. 
Hopefully, some more teams decide to prop up in our area of NY soon
Drew
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Yah, population density is gonna do what it is gonna do. Unfortunately.
The real interesting case studies imo are where teams are geospatially distributed rather than following demographics.
Minnesota is a good example of this imo, largely due to the hard work of a few individuals.
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5030 had this problem. 2014-2017 we would have to travel to Albany or Rochester for competitions. (Until CNY existed)
Similar issues happen for teams in LI/NYC about not having practice space or some far travels.
For example 870 would have a 70 mile drive to Hofstra. With rush hour that’s easily a 2 hour commute to the regional.
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I keep wondering if Southern Tier teams would benefit from the option of competing in FMA instead. If it’s minimum 2 hours out to any event, why not drive in the direction of districts? Every time I think about the logistics of a new FRC team in that area, the idea of just registering the team just across that NY-PA border just for district access keeps coming up.
Also interesting to me is comparing the FRC map to the FTC 2022-2023 team map (at least for upstate, source):
There’s a decent cluster of FTC teams around the Syracuse-Utica-I-90 corridor and along I-81 towards Potsdam – two areas essentially devoid of FRC teams. I’d credit this mostly with (a) the FTC program delivery partner being in Utica and (b) Clarkson University.
However, it’s offset by the comparative lack of teams in the far west of Rochester and Buffalo, where FRC is more common (to what I’m guessing is historical reasons dating to 1992). 4930 is running an FTC qualifier in Buffalo in 2024, so maybe that will help.
On the FTC front,
Clarkson used to run a lot of the empire region in terms of FTC before SUNY Poly took over, and then it moved over to MVCC. This point is seen in FRC as well, clusters tend to form around the region heads/regionals. NYC, Long Island, Albany, and Rochester, where region heads and regionals are based get a cluster of teams. Part of the problem seen in NY you Also see in the Cali and Florida maps. It seems being too far from an event makes it hard for teams to exist/hold a presence. There are a few outliers to this, but it’s a common trend.
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