Toughest Regions

[Blank25]

What about New York, having the highest registration of any state? I'd imagine NY regionals would be especially tough. The NYC regional, for instance, has 70 teams in Division C, and of the teams that can attend the New York state tournament, the lowest qualifier isn't even top 10 in the region (they only go to states because there are multiple teams from top schools like Stuy and Brooklyn Tech which take the spots for top 10). Perhaps somebody with more knowledge about New York than I have could chime in here.

In my region(Lake Erie Niagara Region), regionals are easy because there are a ton of teams that only do like 5-10 events. So high registration does not necessarily mean it's competitive.

[SOPomo]

As the discussion starts getting into teams that miss states, I think the definition of "toughest" region depends somewhat on how many teams qualify. In past years, Southeast C Division had a dominant top 5 teams, but with 7 or 8 teams qualifying for states, you could go to states without being at that level (this may be changing somewhat with Penncrest and Conestoga falling out of the state top 5, Garnet Valley moving into the state top 10, and North Penn and Shipley finishing no worse than 13th).

But considering this, I think it's tough to beat Northern California's Santa Clara County Regional. Due to the way NorCal distributes regional bids, each regional gets 4 bids, regardless of regional size. This year, the four teams to qualify from B Division were Kennedy, Miller, BASIS Silicon Valley, and Chaboya, which finished 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 5th at states, respectively, and the teams to qualify from C were Mountain View, Palo Alto, Monta Vista, and Milpitas, which finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th at states. Greene, which finished 13 points behind Chaboya, and Lynbrook, which finished 14 points behind Milpitas, in all likelihood would have finished in the top 10 at states, but did not even qualify. It's my belief that these two teams are the best teams in either division in the country to not make states this year because of this.

It's possible that NorCal updates their bid distribution policy in the future, but until that happens, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a region with a higher bar of qualification than this one.

It was not long ago when all of the Bay competed in one Regional as well, before splitting into Bay and Santa Clara.

Fresno and Tulare regions getting four bids each is a bit of an imbalance in their favor in NorCal.

[CChin]

SoCal, Northern Midwest, Texas, and New England... I may be wrong though

SoCal is definitely competitive. With Troy HS making it to nationals every year (since 1996) by a huge margin (~100 pts) than other teams, beating them is pretty difficult.