Field Hockey is concentrated on the East Coast from about North Carolina up to Boston and a dash out in the Midwest around Detroit and Chicago. Thus, the West Coast teams will never have enough teams to support a league on their own. By forming a 4 team pod, each school only has to make 1 or 2 trips to the other coast a year and that cuts down on travel costs and time away from class (important for non revenue sports). By the looks of it, the 4 West Coast schools are also within reasonable reach by bus of each other. Sort of the same for the East Coast pod, except that U Albany to U Maine is a haul, 6 hours. Overall, not a bad solution to a tough situation. Only other solution would be for the West Coast teams to drop Field Hockey; but, that my raise Title IX issues for them.