I now would like to Rip up my own idea. I agree with Rip, there is no back door to Open.
I was trying to create a 10th qualifier that happened right at JOs. But then I got worried about people choosing not to qualify for Open so as to try to back into the Gold bracket via Nat. (Give me a noogie for writing a post before my coffee kicked in.)
That said, I still do like it when girls play two sports, but it is probably not a whole team, but a person by person choice. Here is hoping that club directors and high school coaches can cooperate to make that happen.

IMO teams travel to qualifiers because they want to. Yes they want to qualify, but also because they want to play other big time teams. I suppose they also do it in order to get exposure to college coaches for their girls. So even if you change the qualification process, teams will still want to travel the 2nd two reasons. Not to mention, it is fun for the girls.
Our club's teams typically travel to 3 qualifiers a year. Far Western is one of the easier qualifiers (because it is so late in the calendar). They could wait for it but they still travel.
Even if they qualify at the first, they still travel.
And the point to qualifying is that you get to travel once again to JOs.

There is some basic math going on.
How many teams want to play in open at JOs / How many open bids there are
You can change the methods and number of qualifiers and number of at large and whatever you want, but so long as the above ratio is some small number like 1/10 or less, then the competition for a bid, and the lengths that teams will go to work for that bid, is going to be great.

You can water a bid down by increasing the number of open bids to the point that anyone who wants one can get one, but that takes the value out of it entirely. So the key is chosing what number of bids allows you to
1. Keep a high level of intensity to compete for a bid
2. Gives an reasonable sized field to run a competitive 4 day tournament
3. Makes sure that all teams competing are of a quality to make the travel worthwhile

World Cup Soccer is probably a more interesting comparison than Pro American leagues. In the Pros, all teams/divisions/regions are considered equal and no preference is to be given. World Cup has teams qualifying from different regions with different history and talent levels. It is trying to put on a great tournament but it is also trying to promote soccer throughout the world. There is a continual pull between the established strong regions and weaker sisters. Clearly the best team that doesn't qualify from Europe is better than some of the teams that do qualify from Africa or Asia. So are they accomplishing their goals?
1. Promote the sport around the world. Having an all European world cup would not be productive. All regions should be represented and that has been good for the growth of the sport.
2. Find a legitimate champion. The 14th European team might be better than some of the teams in the field, but they clearly should not be the ultimate champion since there are 13 teams ahead of them in Europe alone. (In fact I am sure the 14th team got stuck in a pool of death, had a few injuries, and a bad line call).
3. Run a legitimate tournament. The 32 team field seems to be pretty successful.
4. Make the competition to qualify a challenging process and ensure that all entrants are quality teams.

This is the balancing act that has to be faced in chosing the number. Could we expand to 32 teams in open? Sure. Especially if the JVDA teams come back to the fold. But Math is always going to make it that qualifying to Open is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. And there are always going to be teams that do not qualify that are better than some of the teams that do.