Interesting how some locales are able to send teams to the LLWS year after year. A league in our area was told to split up because their population base was too large. They managed to manipulate the system to get around it and won the US championship. They created a phony league that had no players and then waived the players from those geographic areas back into the original league. The local officials knew exactly what was going on but the lure of a LLWS team was too strong to resist. The league was split up the next year and they haven't won the district since. The locale with the largest remaining population base has won the district and section almost every season since.
It would be interesting to see how close some of these repeater teams come to meeting the LL population limits and how many of them found ways to waive strong players into their leagues.
Part of it is reputation of course. People will move into areas where there's a strong program, but once the league gets split to meet the population base rules that goes away almost immediately.
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