Re: How many team members?
 

20 has about 85~ students, but we struggle to keep them all engaged.

Exactly, it is. One of our major goals this coming season is to engage more students on the team. Right now, of these 80-some students, maybe 40 do a decent amount of work during the build season, 20 are a major part, and 10 show up near-daily. For 80 kids, that's not a lot.

Re: How many team members?
 

How do you find the funding to fund two whole teams?

20 is looking into creating some sort of JV program (We've been talking possibly FTC), and the biggest barrier is funding.

Re: How many team members?
 

MORT has put all the mechanisms into place to allow any and all students to be engaged and involved in the team in all aspects. By having them create practice bots, creating prototypes in the Fall, running workshops in the Summer, having a full FRC based robotics curriculum in school, having multiple sub-teams, and having team 193, we've created several avenues of engagement. At this point, I believe that getting more students fully engaged is no longer up to us, but now it falls on the students to put into this program whatever they want to get out of it. I believe that after a certain point, there is only so much you can do to coax the students into being as dedicated to the team as other students are. At the end of the day, we have plenty of engaged students who will see more leadership opportunities and privileges than their less-involved peers.


As for funding; our district has always supported us since we started out, and it has increased steadily, with a big boom in the past 3 seasons. We have FIRST programs throughout the district in all schools and the community is well aware of the team. Our new lead mentor, David Bodmer, is also extremely personable and this helps reach out to members of the community who rally for the team. The principal and superintendent work with the lead mentor and he is able to sell the program to them very effectively and show growth, as well as team accomplishments. Now, the district helps pay for much of 193 and also for 11's entrance fees because our team has such a strong background in gaining corporate sponsors. We have proved that we are not solely reliant on district funding, and I think that is why we are a responsible investment to them. We have also hosted the NJ FLL Tournament for years, and now the Mt. Olive District event. Again, proving responsibility. We have had multiple visits from politicians, so that provides the district with credibility on their end because it shows the public the effectiveness of our programs.

In all honesty, we are most likely just incredibly lucky to have certain people on our team and in the community looking out for us as well as a strong lead mentor and amazing team parents/mentors.

Re: How many team members?
 

Luck and commitment by quite a few people to keep doing this since 1997.

The demonstration that Team 11 and now Team 193 has endured the good and the bad over all this time is a real litmus test of the value of investing in it.

It's why I keep opening my wallet and helping where I can as well.

Each year the pile of parts gets deeper, the resources increase and every year (even in the ones things do not turn out so well) more students get the opportunity to participate.

There is a critical mass and if you can reach it through various avenues new opportunities open.

Re: How many team members?
 

Four years ago, our team had around 30 members.... Last year, we started the season with over 100 and ended with over 70... We had 32 kids ante-up to go to St. Louis and 50 who lettered.... Only six graduated.... We are bracing for more this year.

What do we do? We are expanding our program to offer FTC teams... We have formal training that focuses on giving veterans the opportunity to specifically tutor rookies... We are actively seeking a lot of outreach... We are building several robots during fall training, so that even the newest members "touch robots." We form subgroups to work on specfic parts of the robot... Etc. Competition-wise, we are going to a fall event and hoping to add a third district competition - in which we would let the younger kids run the show.

And, we work our many mentors really hard.

Re: How many team members?
 

We had peaked above 60, but we were around 55-60

Re: How many team members?
 

We have 49 students. Of them, 9 are graduating. We have 13 mentors, none leaving (that I know of). We also handed out about 200 flyers to students who go to our high schools. It really isn't bad, logistically, if you effectively arrange your team. We have a few main subteams; mechanical, CAD, electrical, programming, and business. This season, we had 9 members in programming, 6 in business, 3 in CAD(we hope to get this number up), 5 in electrical, and the remaining 26 in mechanical. That sounds imbalanced, but it actually works out great. We divide mechanical into groups that each work on a specific robot mechanism (this year included curved shooter, linear shooter, drive train, ground collector, shooter angle, and climber team). Electrical and programming work with each of the mechanical subgroups so that they can get their prototypes wired and programmed. Sounds complicated on paper, works flawlessly in practice.

Re: How many team members?
 

We have 4 Students, but Club Fair is coming up, so we hope to have 10+ after that. Training them will be fun, but worth it.