Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I was talking to a friend recently and we stared arguing whether our schools FRC team is as much of a team as a traditional sports team. I'm the admin captain on my team and have been a member for two (almost full) years but have never played on a sports team in HS. She plays rugby but has never been on an FRC team. When asking out friends we got mixed responses so I was wondering what everyone here had to say about it.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

You're asking on here, so you're going to get quite the heavy bias toward the "Yes, of course they're equal" argument.

That being said, I also think it depends on what sports team and what robotics team.
Some teams of both types don't require as much dedication or work as some others. I guarantee every member of 1678 works harder than 99% of athletes.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I would say they're pretty comparable. Long practices, year-round meetings (depending on the team), a somewhat clearly-defined season, etc. The only difference is that FRC is not really athletic, and there are fewer competitions/ meets.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I very much doubt that 99% number. I know a lot of athletes, and while I don't know 1678 personally (but I don't doubt their dedication considering their successes), there is no way they can compete against peak-level high school athletes who work 3-5 hours (or more) on average every single day year-round to maintain their skill level and competitiveness. Don't shortchange a dedicated athlete.

If you are comparing the average FRC team to the average sports team, the comparison becomes even more one sided since almost every high school sports team practices at least somewhat year round for quite a few hours per week. In comparison, while many FRC teams do off-season work, their time commitment again pales in comparison to sports.

However, having said that, it seems to me that during the build season, time commitment can be roughly equivalent, if not a more to high school FRC teams over high school sports teams.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Yes, of course they are equal, in every way you can think of, except for all the ways they are exact opposites.

Is an apple equal to an orange? Is an apple equal to another apple? Is one half of an apple equal to the other half?

I recommend spending your time on other, more important questions, like "Does a submarine swim?"

Or, "How is a traditional sports team like a fish without a bicycle?"

;)
Blake
PS: The swimming submarine is part of a non-trivial discussion...

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I should also probably mention that her main argument was that they don't have the same "atmosphere". Meaning that the people on her rugby team were closer than the people on my FRC team are.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Our school is pretty small (about 350 kids total), so we have no sports teams, other than Team 4. With almost 20% of the school population on the team, we are the sports team!

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I very much understand that some athletes are incredibly hard-working. I was involved in Varsity Wrestling for all of high school, and I experienced quite a bit of success, and so did my robotics team. My wrestling team was consistently top 5 in the state, and my robotics team won a number of regional events.
During build season I would put in more time into robotics than I did wrestling, but during the off-season for robotics, I put more time into wrestling.
Having experienced relatively high levels of commitment in both, I don't doubt that I put in more work into either one than most athletes put into their sport.

I wasn't comparing the top 1% of both, which I find comparable, I was comparing the top 1% of robotics teams with the 99% of sports teams- where the robotics team puts in significantly more work.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

This would definitely depend on the type of team (frc and sport). I see a huge variance of atmospheres on sports teams and FRC teams. For what it's worth, in my experience the average FRC team seems to be more tight-knit, but to be sure that suffers from undercoverage bias.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

If this is the argument, I would say the core group of most FRC teams is definitely comparable to a sports team. My FRC team was very much like a family, and we had a very close group of dedicated students. The main difference was you didn't have to try out for our FRC team, we let everyone join.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

It's a tough comparison to make. We don't work year-round and there's no reason for an athlete to practice for 16 hours in one day so there's some stark differences. Depends how you want to define hard work, and from Karthik's presentation it sounds like 1114 easily works as hard as we do.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I'll agree that the "99%" number is overblown for 1678, but they do put in as much work as any other athletic team "in season" and quite a bit out of season. Davis HS also has the most successful athletics program in our section--I believe they have more total section titles than any other HS. So I think I have a pretty good measure of what other athletic team sports require. (I also placed in my HS state track meet and ran in the NCAA championship.)

As with any athletic team the amount of time commitment varies by student. However, I'll give you one measure I know: my son put in 250 hours in his senior year in the 6 week build season. I think that's typical of our core team. The amount of work in the competitive season has varied by is still substantial. I would put this commitment at the level of the highly competitive football programs.

Of course it drops off during the off season, but it's still about 6 to 10 hours a week from late August to late May. Some students work on special projects over the summer.

So I would say that the commitment is the same at most athletic teams. How they should be compared I'm not so sure about.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Woo! My time to shine!

About me: I am currently a division one rower at a highly competitive university (top 10 in the US), studying mechanical engineering and computer science. I rowed all through high school while being on my school's FRC team. I was founding member of the FRC team, eventual captain and would like to consider myself one of the most dedicated people we had. I was also the captain of my rowing team.

I'll use a couple different standards of comparison here, I'll try my best to compare these without too much bias either way!

TIME:

Personally, my rowing team took more time in high school. I know that our FRC team did not meet as much as other teams. We only met Tuesday/Thursday for 3 hours each and then Saturday 9-5. Obviously during the end of the season it stepped up and we met more but generally my rowing team would practice 2.5 hours a day for 6 days a week.
Additionally, rowing was in season during the fall and the spring with offseason training in the winter while FRC only had regular meetings during winter and throughout our competition season.

EFFORT:

This one is pretty equivalent. I would say that rowing is much much more physically demanding while it requires very little mentally. Obviously robotics is the exact opposite here. I think that designing a system for the bot versus training towards a goal time isn't a very fair comparison here. One is a very long term goal that requires months of effort while another is a very short term but pretty stressful process. This one I can't confidently compare.

ATMOSPHERE:

To clarify here, this is just how the team feels. This one is definitely different. I think that both teams are close. I had best friends on both of my teams in high school. I would have to say that my rowing team as a whole might have been a little bit closer but that would just have come from spending more time together. Additionally, the sports team bond is actually kind of close to what is depicted in movies. You all share in the misery of training and losing and the euphoria of winning. At times this feels stronger than that on an FRC team because training is putting yourself through quite a bit of physical pain where as the design process is (in my opinion) still pretty fun regardless of the outcome! I think that I would have to sum up my relationship with my FRC teammates as being slightly more on the professional side where as I might have actually been closer with my rowing friends.

Summary: I would say about equal in all things except time! This will vary team to team but in my experience my sport took more time.


I'll post more later but I have finals to study for!! Please reply with specific questions if you have them!

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I'd have to disagree with you, I've played on a club Soccer team for 4 years and I've been apart of FRC for 4 year and I can say the Sports are more taxing on your body physically, though FRC is more taxing on the mind. Also I would not consider FRC a Sport, rather more of a club-a-tition. . . club vs. club.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

First off, I am assuming you are talking about Varsity sports in high-school.

In a lot of ways, this is comparing apples to oranges. They are different in many ways, and in my opinion, an FRC team has a lot more aspects to it that aren't comparable to sports, while most qualities in a sports team have comparable qualities to an FRC team. Though I can go on for hours about why I think an FRC team is the ultimate extra-curricular activity, that doesn't seem to be the discussion here. Instead, I am just going to describe the overlapping qualities, and how they compare.

Competitiveness
This one I think you have to give to sports team. In general, while most FRC teams are competitive, almost all sports teams are highly competitive. And the top competitive sports teams (like, top .1-1%) are imo much more competitive than there FRC counterparts. Some of this is due to culture, but the other part of this is that FRC does not encourage the barbaric competitiveness that is fostered in many sports programs. Many highly competitive sports programs are just at an unhealthy level of competition, and FIRST tries to not promote that.

Time Commitment
This one has so many caveats its hard to compare. I am going to break it up into the general team, like official meeting times, and then break it down further to the individual members.

On a general team basis, I think it can be pretty even across the board. My FRC team put in 13 hours a week at meetings, while my Cross Country team put in 12 hours a week at practice, making those pretty even. Generally though, while Sports teams as a whole only put in so many hours a week, the highest level FRC teams can put in a lot more hours a week. I know FRC teams, not just members, teams, that put in 40+ hours a week, which probably isn't touched by any high-school sports team in the country (probably a few exceptions, but not many). The middle-ground sports/FRc teams are pretty even, while FRc is top-heavy in time commitment.

As for individual members, there is a lot more discrepancy. For the middle-ground sports/FRC teams, the average Joe athlete probably puts in more hours than the average Joe FRC student. Again though, I think FRC is top-heavy here. The most committed members of FRC teams put in hours that could almost never be touched by even the most committed athletes (that actually, you know, go to school). And a lot of that just comes down to oppurtunity. Whereas an athlete really only has from 4-7 am and 3-11 pm on an average school day, and 4 am to 11pm on days off, an FRC member has a lot more hours to put in. For FRC, especially if you are on more of the "business" side of your team, you can basically work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if your body would let you. I know I personally spent more time on FRC between the hours of 11pm and 4 am my senior year than I spent practicing for cross country any single year. And FRC can occur year round if you are more of a chairmans team, while many sports are just one season. At the end of the day, the FRC individual commitment has the potential to be, and is, much more top-heavy than sports, while middle-ground favors athletics.

Though there are some other apt comparisons I could talk about, my post is officially to long, so I'll stop here.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Yes. I am on chairmans and website and programming and it's legit non-stop. Like I do varsity tennis and take indoor lessons throughout the winter and spring two hours a day twice a week and over the summer I do a league that practices 4 hours a day twice a week and then in the fall we practice 3-5:30 every day after school and compete twice a week and I can still say without a doubt that I spend about 3 times as much time on FRC as I do on tennis. I work on the website a lot and plan drives and fundraisers and work on the app we made about FIRST robotics and keep track of the countries we reach and which ones are third world countries and watch YouTube videos on programming and a lot of other things about 4 hours a day, every day, no exaggeration. Off season. On season, I do it pretty much 24/7. Even during class I sit and make lists of countries and outreach and updates I could make, etc. And I'm not even one of the top teams like 1678 and 341 and 2826.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

For our team, I believe its the equivalent if not more, vs our athletes in our State.
The difference though is what our society/culture deems as relevant/important.

Our football players/coaches/parents and other volunteers dont have to worry about funding their own facilities, pay for their own uniforms, mowing the grass, taking care of the bleachers, paying their coaches or paying for the buses to take them to games. Our robotics team has to do all of that in addition to teaching our students robotics-related skill sets. So I guess we spend more time doing Robotics but not as much time honing our skills.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I am not certain that you can concretely compare Robotics to all other sports. That being stated, how can one compare one sport against another?

I have coached soccer at the Varsity Level for 7 years; I have coached wrestling at multiple levels for over a decade; I have now coached FRC for 3 seasons.

In terms of comparing one sport against another - it is a ridiculous task. The objectives are not equal - so the argument is moot.

FRC is a sport. Why? Because we compete. The ultimate end result is a winner. If you do not win, you lose.

Cross-Country is a sport.
NASCAR is a sport.
Golf is a sport.

All of these are sports where you compete against another person or team - but ultimately you are competing against yourself - to produce your best result.

So yes, FIRST is a sport.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

So is FRC not a sport in 2017? :yikes:

It depends on the sport

As a gymnast I practice 4 hours every day all year round. It's a lot more work then frc sorry but it is.

During build season I'm also at robotics every day for a few hours but it's no where near as hard then doing sport training for hours.

Let alone that I'm a high level but some of my elite friends practice 8-10 hours a day. No where near an frc team.


Frc is hard mentally but overall not as hard as a traditional sport

Sorry but it is

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I should fine-tune my previous answer.
For the vast majority of those who participate in robotics, there is no comparison to those who play sports. Sports requires a much larger time committment than FRC for almost everybody in FRC.
But, if you are in the tiny margin of people that spend hours and hours working, then the time you spend is comparable to the tiny margin of sports; personally I spend anywhere between 6-8 hours of FRC stuff on weekdays, and more on weekends. Once it gets to the point where all free time is spent on something, it is no longer a question of who is spending more time, but rather a question of who has more time to spend.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Right now, people don't consider robotics to be a sport.

By people, I mean the general public.

There are some really forward-thinking states that have high-school athletic associations that actually do recognize robotics as a legitimate sport, and I think this is an amazing thing.

I think it is extremely important that we (the FIRST community) do our best to start convincing others to treat robotics more like a sport.

There are a lot of reasons which I highlight in this blog post:

Robotics: A Character-Building Sport for the Mind
http://www.crescentschool.org/learn-more/crescentvoices

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I think that if you're looking at spent time, FRC dominates sports. Or at least by my standpoint because I was required at every meeting. During the build season I was spending more time a week at robotics then I was at school. 35 hours a week at school, and at LEAST 37 hours, at the end of the build season it was approaching around 40-45. I think that the community of the kids is way different than an actual sports team. On sports teams I see more competitiveness within the team, and you'll never see gracious professionalism between different sports teams.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

This thread raises an interesting question for me: Is academics a sport? After all, most of us are competing for the highest rank, the most APs, the highest test scores, etc. And in some schools, students get letters for academic achievement.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

this being the main point would make FRC and most sports very similar, in that some teams have disharmony, others are the party team, while others work perfectly together, with only minimal issues.

That being said FRC is not a sport. there is not enough physical exertion during the actual competition, and the majority of the team technically does not compete (but instead plays some sort of support role to the 4 that do). Most sports require a specific skillset to be successful on the team, but in FRC there are many different skills that are of use (I spend a comparatively small amount of time on the robot, but I help a lot with strategy development, chairmens and scouting). FRC is something wonderful in and of itself, but a sport it is not- I think it is better than a traditional sports team, but that might be a bit of a personal bias :cool:

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Yes.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I am a member of team 1678, and also a member of our high school's track team. I am also a black belt in martial arts. I work at a high level in all. On 1678, I am a travel team member. We choose travel team members based off of how much they put in to the team. In track, I am one of our league's leading high jumpers. (We are in a rather competitive league as well). In order to even be eligible for your black belt in my studio, you need to put in over 5 years of training.

I can honestly say that I put way more into robotics than sports. While arguing about martial arts being a traditional sport is something else, I also have my track experiences to fall back on.

People talk about the atmosphere not being the same, and I think that really depends on the sport. With track, we have a team of over 200 people. You really only get to know people in your event group, and even then what you are doing is individual. With robotics, I know pretty much all of our dedicated members, and we all work together as a team.

As for time commitments, it's hard to say. The robotics team only meets twice a week after school, and then on the weekends. However, we put in a lot of hours on those days. With track, I train every day after school, and only do things on the weekends if I qualified for an invitational meet. Things get even messier for the fact that I have to miss track for robotics, and robotics for track at different times during the overlapping seasons.

As to which one makes me more physically exhausted, again it's hard to say. Track makes me sore in a way robotics never could, but robotics makes us work longer than the track team does.

In the end, while robotics is defiantly not a traditional sports team, I think that it has a lot of similarities in a lot of different ways. But everything varies from robotics team to robotics team, and sport to sport.

Just as another note, high jump is a strange sport, but no one would argue that it is not a sport. In high jump, we make a jump, get advice from our coach on what to change in the next one, and than sit and wait for 5 to 10 minutes for our name to be called again. We have to really strategize what to do for each of our limited jumps, because every one counts in the final standing. As far as I can tell, this is a very similar experience to the drive team (granted I'm not on the drive team). The drive team plays a match, and has to focus on what they are doing in that match, and not being too mental about it (very similar to what I have to do to jump). They then finish the match, and look at how the strategy works. Then, they go and prepare for the next one. What they do in that match also has to be calculated, and they have to just do what they need to do.

For me, all of this sounds like my high jumping process, which would mean that at least at the competition level, there is virally no difference between an athlete competing and a robotics team competing.

These are all just my opinions and observations as both and athlete and robotics team member.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Club is almost a dirty word on our team. Club carries with it a connotation of something you only sink part time into, something that you don't devote yourself to. We stopped calling ourselves a club some time ago after we realized it hurt our contributions from potential sponsors.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

I have to disagree. Your definition for sport is very off. Certainly all of the above are competitions, but having something where you compete simply doesn't mean its a sport.

Are marching bands a sport?
Is chess a sport?
Are math competitions a sport?
Is juggling a sport?
Do eating competitions qualify as sports?
Is the lottery a sport?

All of the above have winners, but most would not qualify as sports. Where do you draw the line? Simply having a winner isn't a sufficient answer.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

By definition, robotics is not a sport. Is there anything wrong with robotics not being a sport? The real problem is that there is not enough recognition for non-sport school activities. It sucks that the robotics, math teams, and other academic activities have to fight tooth and nail for funding. What needs to happen is a cultural change that values both physical and mental activities.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

What do poker, eating competitions, NASCAR, golf, and FRC all have in common?


They've ALL been shown on various SPORTS networks on TV. Yes, even FRC (ESPN, 1996 or so?--before my time at any rate). Thus, either certain SPORTS network executives need to rebrand their networks, or the networks need to find new executives, or those are all sports.


And just to drive the point home, you just called an Olympic sport not a sport. (Golf, for the record.) If you're going to go that route, might I also suggest removing archery and other shooting sports (other than biathalon, which involves skiing) from the sports list?


Now, some of that list I'd have to agree on (the lottery, possibly juggling, chess, and most likely math competitions), but then you've got to figure out why those aren't and all the other stuff is.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

1. I never said anything about Golf not being a sport, sorry if you misunderstood.

2. ESPN and other sporting networks are not bound by any means to show exclusively sporting events. ESPN shows whatever brings in the most value for them. In those cases, dramatizing competitions is not a far cry from sports, and doesn't stray from their target market too much, so they broadcast those events. I can't buy your logic in saying that ESPN declares which events are 'sports', and which aren't.

3. In my personal opinion, I wouldn't define any of the examples I listed as sports. However, I was simply rebutting the point and since you are the proponent of the original argument, the impetus is on you to define where you draw the line.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

From Wikipedia:
Chess is recognized by the IOC as a sport, although it is not part of the Olympic Games.

Sources:
http://www.olympic.org/content/the-i...ons/?tab=arisf
http://www.arisf.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic...ognized_sports

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Saying that "all of the above are competitions" (referring to three items including GOLF) "but that doesn't necessarily mean they're sports" sure comes close to saying they aren't sports.
Let me rephrase that a little bit for you: If those sports networks are showing things that are not sports, and claiming to be sports networks/sports channels, then you, the consumer, have every right to bring a "false advertising" claim. Yes? OK, so they're showing what we think are non-sports competitions. So they think that those events qualify as sports under whatever definition they happen to be using, which I'm pretty sure isn't quite the same as ours.

As a matter of fact, I was simply rebutting YOUR point, so I'm afraid you get to draw the line. But, seeing as you went there: Marching band could be a sport: physical exertion, there are competitions involved, there are winners, there is training. Competitive eating is a little more far-fetched--but you still have those same four elements, so I can see the case. Math competitions and the lottery don't really have any physical exertion, so I have a hard time with those. Juggling I'm not even sure has competitions... Chess I'd try the (lack of) physical exertion argument on but I've already been shown that that's recognized as a sport.

I loosely draw the line as follows: some sort of physical exertion, training, and competition with winner(s). If you don't have all of those, the best you can do is "sport of the mind".

Ya know, there's a really easy way to get robotics recognized as a sport. Anybody wanna petition the IOC? :p :rolleyes:

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

The question was, "Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?"

The answer is No. But a better answer is, "No, but why do we even care?"

Traditional sports teams are not equal to other traditional sports teams. Football is not equal to swimming. Basketball is not equal to soccer. That's the way it is, live with it.

The better question is, "Is a FIRST team as respected as other activities?" If the answer to that is No, you have to ask your own team, Why not? You need to work to earn the respect of your fellow students, your faculty and your administrators.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Is a Choir class equal to a Calculus class? How about Bowling vs. Film Study? German Lit vs. Culinary Arts?

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Brazenly quoting myself ...

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Based on my rugby playing experience I tend to agree with your friend. There is a particular bond that develops in a team where everyone has a specific specialist role which directly contributes to success of the whole. Add in both the physicality of a hard contact sport and the continuous nature of the game, and a very close team atmosphere is the norm not the exception.

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Does that not also apply to FRC?

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

That part does.
Physical contact sport doesn't (possible exception of 2014 game).

Re: Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?
 

Even by any definition given on this tread, FRC qualifies as a sport.

Time:
For background, I sail for a varsity sailing team which is top 5 in our region and likely top 15 in the country. We have practice for 3.5 hours a day and 9-4 weekend meets. On the other hand, with FRC, we easily can go for 6 hours a day and 8-10 on weekends. In terms of time, FRC wins easily.

Skill:
I think we can all agree that FRC requires just as much if not more skill than whatever sport you play.

Physical Exertion:
Locktite in a bolt ever? Or have to bend metal with a hand brake? Or carry a 120 pound robot on and off the field and position it? There is some physical exertion there. Maybe it doesn't match sports, but it is there.

Atmosphere:
There is a close bond that forms on a sports team, one that a whole FRC team does not get close to. However, the bond between team leaders or the drive team who spend seemingly every waking moment together is something that sports, for me, has never compared to.

However, FRC is not widely recognized as a sport. That is a problem, for everyone involved. I have had arguments about what constitutes a sport many times not even including FRC. And have been told crew, sailing, and FRC are all not sports. The arguments always end up not being about what constitues a sport but rather about the problem humans have with acknowledging the effort and achievements of others. It is somehow threatening for someone else to work harder than you or to have more success than you.

Ninja Edit: Forgot Physical Exertion category