Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Hi!

We have a member that is currently at a crossroads. He enjoys playing basketball. He also very much enjoys robotics. The problem is that the times that we meet for robotics completely overlaps the basketball practice and game schedule except for a few days. We are an incredibly small team with an average of 2.7 people staying for robotics after-school and this person is a very talented and passionate mechanical member. So having another person every day would improve our robot quality output drastically. He and I are friends and have talked extensively about this and here are his reasons for basketball or robotics:

Stay in Basketball:
- Make father happy(his father enjoys watching basketball during the winter)
- His girlfriend is the student manager of the team
- He feels like he might disappoint the team if he leaves
- He enjoys it

Commit fully to Robotics:
- He is a Senior so this would be his last year as a student
- The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)
- He could be an awesome driver if he stayed and practiced
- There is always the chance to go to St.Louis
- He loves building robots

I should mention that he already is helping as much as he can, but by leaving basketball, he would be able to help out much more.

I post this because I feel that someone in the vast Delphi community has had members with the same situation and I was wondering what you said to them to try to nudge them towards robotics. Ultimately, it is, of course, his decision but I want to make sure I highlight all the good things that could come of him committing fully to FIRST robotics next season. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I think one of the best arguments you could make to him would be regarding his future as a whole. You said the basketball team isn't very good, so you could probably say that robotics will be better towards his career as a whole. You could even get him to try and introduce his father and girlfriend to FRC as well.

Source: Have seen similar situations

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Don't convince him. Let him do what he wants. Tell him to do what he likes more. You don't want him regretting his path later.

+1. I more or less agree with this but I have some questions. Is his basketball talent drawing interests from colleges and the like? If so and he has scholarship offers and things like that I would stick with basketball. Otherwise FRC will probably benefit him more in the future.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I was just going to add that. He just joined basketball in 10th grade without any prior basketball team experience. He doesn't have quite enough skill for scholarships. He does for track, but thankfully that is in the spring.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Creating a list of each choice like you did is a great way to see things clearly. You may want to talk to your friend that he is missing one point. In general colleges do not like to see people quitting things in the middle of their high school career especially their senior year. Getting involved in high school sports is not all about winning. It is about making a commitment to others, training hard, doing your best, trusting your teammates, sportsmanship etc. Whether he is on a winning team or not does not matter especially if college basketball scholarship is not involved in this case (which is my assumption because otherwise he definitely cannot quit). Some colleges like to have students who were involved in sports. They never asked what your team or personal record is on the application unless you are being recruited. The common app does not even distinguish between varsity or junior varsity teams.
Your friend is already on the team. Trying to convince him to quit basketball to concentrate on robotics to help you and your team may not be in his best interest. He can still benefit from FIRST even with minimal involvement. He can still be inspired to go into STEM. But like other people have already said, it should be his decision. A good friend will help him make the best decision for his future, not yours.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Perhaps there's a way for you to shift your meeting times such that basketball and FRC don't interfere. Having meetings after homework, sports, dinner, etc. was advantageous in my case.

I agree with Ed Law's points as well; remember that FIRST is foremost about inspiration. A few years down the road, the quality of your senior year robot will be far from your mind and your friend shouldn't be basing his decision around this aspect of your team's success.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I would add that the colleges that he is looking at are either a community college for welding or an average state school for something with robotics(which he is already qualified for via ACT score and GPA). Looking at the list I made, I see that the reason he would stay in basketball is more for others than for himself(pleasing his father and girlfriend).

I totally agree that it is his decision and I think he won't go wrong either way he goes, but I just wanted to make sure I informed him of what all robotics can do for him so he has a better picture. I think he has a chance to form a legacy in the robotics team as we, Team 4480, have never won an award or a blue banner. People likely won't remember him on the basketball team two years from now, but they may remember him from that blue banner/award hanging in the showcase(IF we get one of course).

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I agree, FRC sells itself. Though, if he is having a difficult time with his decision, you can help him think through it. I know that going through the decision process out loud can be helpful to some people.

I respectfully disagree on this point. While it is true that colleges do like to see commitment, it is just one of many things they look for. I think that people put much too large of an emphasis on getting involved in as many things as possible in high school. I know that when I was a freshman, I was involved in like 12 things, like every other freshman. By the time I was a senior, I was only involved in about 4 things. However, I would not say I was only 1/3 as involved in extracurriculars senior year. In fact, I probably spent 2 or 3 times as much time doing extracurriculars (Thank You Build Season). I didn't quit 8 clubs so I could sleep more, I quit them as I discovered my interests and so I could become more committed to the few things I was really passionate about. I would argue that making the decision to quit a sport to focus on robotics or vice versa (Though why would anyone do that? :D), actually shows more commitment because you demonstrate your willingness to make sacrifices for robotics.

Extracurriculars are just one part of the application. There are also essays, leadership positions, interviews, and more. If narrowing your activities makes these other categories stronger, it more than makes up for the slight 'hit' to your extracurriculars. I know that by far my best essay was one I wrote about robotics. People who read it said they felt the passion and personality in it much more than in any other essay. Colleges are looking for a person in the application, not a resume.

I'm going to give you and your friend some advice that you will completely ignore and that I did too until about 3 months ago. STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT COLLEGES WANT!!!! The extra 10 points on your SAT, or extra AP class, or extra activity DON'T MATTER and won't make a difference. So please ignore everything I wrote above (I only wrote it because I know you won't) and consider this: If your friend (or anyone else) decides to do something solely because it "looks good for college," they will be miserable. I don't think that is true in your friends case, but please just DON'T THINK ABOUT COLLEGE in this decision. You will be much happier with your decision if you don't.

BTW: If your friend is looking for college essay ideas, writing about the difficulty of this decision is not a bad one.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

On the other hand, there is college basketball money and robotics money. Have him check with the schools to see if anyone will give him grants for being in robotics. Remember, millions and millions of dollars are out there, all you need to do is ASK.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Do not encourage your student to base life decisions on what colleges may want. Have them base it on what the student wants to do with their life.



Unfortunately, college scholarships and admittance is about ACT/SAT scores and items beyond the students control.

The captain of my FRC team this year; a district honor student (4.0+ GPA and 30 ACT score), soccer team captain, president of the math club. Received far less in scholarships (from the same college) than his brother (one year elder) that coasted through school with an average GPA and a 33 on the ACT. My captain didn't even get the $500 FIRST scholarship the school offers.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I don't quite understand your point and your example. From listening to dozens of talks from admission officers, I gathered that colleges are interested in 6 main areas:
1) GPA
2) Standardized test scores
3) Essays and supplemental questions if any
4) Extra-curricular activities and Leadership
5) Work experience and Entrepreneurship
6) Recommendation letters
They are not in any particular order. Every college will put different things as higher priority. A student has more control over some of these than others but I would argue that there is nothing on that list that the student has no control at all. These are things that admission officers use to see whether the student will be a good fit for the college. What students want to do with their life has nothing to do with these 6 things. Are you suggesting that students should do whatever they want and not care about what colleges are looking for? And none of the 6 areas are things that could help in their future whatever they decided to pursue? To avoid further misunderstanding, I don't advocate that students join a club or activity just to look good on their resume to help them get into a certain field. If they have no interest in that field, then they should not be joining that activity. If you don't have passion in what you do, it will show on the application. Joining many activities do not make you look good. It actually makes you look bad. On the other hand, I do encourage younger students to try as many things as they have time for, then narrow down to the things that they enjoy the most.
I am not looking for an argument with you. I am not trying to convince you that I am right. You work with your students the way you want to.
Back to the OP, since your friend is looking into going to a community college, what I said to you before is not as important. It is really his choice. Sometimes in life, you have to do what makes yourself happy but there are people around you that you have to consider also. It is not always about you.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Let's change the situation. Suppose a student couldn't come to robotics because she had tutoring sessions. Would you be encouraging her to skip tutoring to go to robotics? Of course not, because tutoring is important; maybe she would fail a class without it.

So it comes down to priorities. What is important to the student, overall? Basketball seems to be important to him (or he wouldn't do it); only he knows the reasons why. You mentioned pleasing people and not letting down the team, but you also said he enjoyed it. So he should be free to do basketball if that's what he wants to do.

You have options. As others mentioned, perhaps you could change some team meeting times. My thought is that you should recruit new team members, or encourage other existing team members to come more often, so that you will get more than 2.7 people at a meeting.

Some robotics teams require strict participation rules. Others will accept members for the time that they can give, as long as they are productive members when they do come. Obviously there must be some limits; someone who shows up 4 times in the six week build season isn't a committed team member.

It can be a challenge. I remember one sub-team leader on my daughter's team who didn't show up for about a week because he had to work, and the part of the robot he was working on fell behind schedule. Those kind of things can be resolved by better communication and having backups for when someone can't be there. But you can make it work.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Can't believe I'm saying this, but Sam is right.

Let students do what they want.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

My advice; do not try to convince your friend. Encourage him to pursue HIS passion and support that decision. It sounds like he knows the attributes of each. Although difficult to remove pleasing others from the decision, I would hope the decision would be about his passion and not others' impressed wishes or impressions.
Unless your friend has committed to play basketball, he is not letting anyone down.

Has his father or girl friend ever been to an FRC event? In my experience FIRST sells itself. Especially FRC.

Although doing something to check off a box on a college application goes against my nature, I believe that most colleges look at participation as participation. Basketball robotics either is participation.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

It's not that students should ignore college completely throughout high school, it's that by the time you are an incoming senior, there is very little you can change in a significant way. You have your essays and maybe SATs if you haven't taken them before (If you've already taken them the odds are you won't do that much better). Basically just don't let your grades drop and don't get suspended and let what happens happens. Also, high school seniors do not need to be told to think about college with every decision to think about college with every decision.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Really agree with you here. I did several outside of school activities only because I was told by everyone how much it would help me look good to colleges but I ended up being miserable because I never enjoyed them that much. In addition I over exerted myself doing many different activities at the same time which only let me have about 3 hours of sleep (unfortunately a lot of high schoolers share this plight) a night for a while. I since have done some self reflecting and done what makes me happy and quit eveything else. Admittedly, I'm still working on some things.

I.e. I quit drama to dedicate myself to robotics fully and don't regret it.
I quit my instrument to take an extra AP and I do regret it.

I know I will end up at the school that is right for me if I be real with doing the activities I like to do.

The college process, while has its patterns, can also be pretty unpredictable. Whether the admissions officers will prefer a basketball player over a robotics kid who knows?

He should do what makes him happy and then go where it fits right for him. As a friend I encourage you to let him know you are not putting any pressure on him and are no expecting anything from him (dedication wise), unless he fully commits to robotics.

Maybe you should forward him this thread so he can read the feedback for himself without a mediator and then decide?

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

To those 6, I would add "Class Rank", as GPA (in a vacuum) can be very deceptive when comparing school to school.

Good post.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Class rank is also meaningless. Most schools just look at your raw transcript and calculate gpa using their own formula. Plus, it's all the same thing to the student.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

It is tough/nearly impossible to change the meeting times because our one and only mentor has a family to take care of. The time we meet currently is what works best for him. We would, of course, like another mentor(preferably a mentor with professional engineering experience), but living in a town of 400, it is much easier said than done.

The student is our most experienced mechanical builder so it is like have a Senior mechanical engineer leave a company and have to fill the void with entry level engineers. We will likely have two more committed members next year so that would probably bring the average to about 4.3, but these members need training so who would be better to teach them then our most experienced mechanical member?

From what I have talked to him over the past couple of weeks, he keeps mentioning how excited he is for the next build season challenge. But yes, I agree that whatever he has more passion for, he should go and do.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Having graduated from a small Minnesota school myself, what you need is more kids and mentors on the team. You need more exposure, can you bring in kids from nearby schools, enlist the help of shop teachers, enlist the help of other teachers. In a school that small all of the folks need to work together, and not compete for the finite number of resources you have. Do you have any local industry, mechanics, farmers, electricians, we always had folks willing to help the school back home.

Casting aspersions on the basketball team as unsuccessful "The basketball team isn't going anywhere(last year the record was 5-15)", isn't an entirely honest argument from a struggling FRC team that finished 60th at your only event this year.

Bring your school and community together to solve your problems, they are larger than one student.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

You couldn't be more wrong. As two of my good friends are college recruiters (1 an Ivy school, 1 a good private institution), they absolutely look at it. It may not matter much at all for 85% of schools, but the better ones care.

Not all high schools offer the same opportunity, so class rank differentiates who can outperform their peers. But you are correct, all (I would guess) recalculate GPAs based on the raw transcript info to make it apples-to-apples.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

This. Our drive team includes members who quit Football and Cross-Country to get more involved in robotics. Some members have left for Tennis. It's up to the individual, not either team.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Shots fired lol.

We got the short end of the stick because of who we were matched up against and with. Our robot functioned nicely every single match, even hitting a high goal in auto. Just some stats from that regional....

Scored 11.25 Auto points per match(7th in Auto OPR)

Scored average of 53.3875% of our alliance's points

Anyways, basketball is much different than robotics. Basketball requires a certain amount of natural talent(i.e. height, arm length, speed) in order to be successful and those variables typically don't change much. Robotics relies on ideas and execution of those ideas which changes a lot each year. One year you may have the best idea and the next the worst idea for your robot. My point is, just because we were matched with not the great teams does not mean that next year we will be getting 60th again.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

There is also a certain amount of fufillment in robotics in just making it to the competition, which isn't present in sports.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Did you read my whole post? You need to work with your community and school. Your issue isn't that you may loose one student, it is that you only have one mentor and a couple of dedicated students.

Robotics requires skills just like sports, just a different set of skills. You will never win if you are fighting against sports and other clubs in our schools, you must find a way to work with them.

We have over 1000 students in our school and I still have to work with sports, band, Boy Scouts, other clubs, etc.

If you have a one or the other attitude you are hurting your team. Since you only have a few kids, it should be easier to work a more inclusive schedule. Don't let one person dictate the schedule, have your mentor assign tasks for the students so that they can work without him.

Teach these up and coming students in the offseason.

Get out of your own comfort zone.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I have been assuming that I am talking to the School Sponsor aka teacher/mentor. What is your role on the team?

Looking back on the original posts, I realise that you are a student. You need a passionate dedicated school teacher/coach for your club. Do you have one? If not, find one. Is this part of a class or entirely after school.

Focus on making the team better, which will require off season dedication from everyone.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

My official role is programming although since it is such a tiny team I end up doing a lot of other things.

Yes, we do have a very passionate coach for our club but he balances being a good father/husband with being at robotics which is a hard thing to do. I think I will step up my search for another mentor.

The robotics program has a class and then after school there is also robotics.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

We always make the pitch to those considering robotics vs athletics (or cheer leading or band or whatever) that "robotics is the one team we have on campus where everyone can go pro". We do not push beyond that unless it is clear that the student wants to do robotics, but needs help to justify it over other priorities. That is, if your athlete is "trying to find a way to do robotics instead of athletics", press a bit, and help him/her through the obstacles to doing robotics. Otherwise, back off and decide whether or not to accept what help [s]he can provide as an athlete, and move forward.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

You need to make your team a family, my wife and son are routinely at our meetings, as are other peoples family members. Make sure your team is at least dining together at your team meetings.

I suggest you enlist the help of your local church groups, I know those fine Minnesota ladies would love make your team a meal or two during build season. I can taste the hotdish now.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Oh my goodness @Fusion_Clint - this is a GREAT IDEA! I am not certain why we had not thought of this before! FRC 4607 CIS will be implementing the 'Church Lady Potluck' this coming season!

Sorry for all the exclamation points... but this is truly a ground-shaking -albeit overlooked - idea for us in Becker (where we have 3 Lutheran churches, 2 Catholic churches, and a number of other denominations in our community). We can feed the kids and welcome in a new group of people each weekend!

Thank you!

~Coach Jurek

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

Not meaning to hijack the thread, but speaking of oft-overlooked sources of donations, local politicians during election years can be a great cash flow. If a $100 donation gets sponsors on the back of your shirt or your banner or your robot or whatever form of advertisement, usually just about every political running for office will respond favorably to a cold call.

At least that's been my team's experience. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

When my sports coach asked me to commit to either my sport or to robotics, the breaking point for me was that it was not possible for me to go pro in sports, but I do plan on going pro in robotics.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

I'm glad to help out!

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

To take this even wider, for an FRC team member to "take it pro" doesn't necessarily mean that his/her job title will be "roboticist". It could be any of the following, and probably a lot more besides:

• Roboticist
• Mechanical Engineer (Technician)
• Electrical Engineer (Technician)
• Pneumatics Engineer (Technician)
• Software Engineer (Technician)
• Systems Engineer (Technician)
• Materials Engineer (Scientist) (Technician)
• Machinist
• Welder
• Physicist
• Programmer
• Mathematician (including statistician)
• Sales
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Project planner/manager
• Administrator
• Executive agent
• Administrative Assistant

And OBTW, Veronica (my daughter) is planning to become an ASL (American Sign Language) signer and possibly teacher. As she pursues this career, I am certain that she will exercise skills she learned or developed while competing on FRC 3946. Everyone can turn pro from FRC, even if [s]he chooses a non-STEM career path.

Re: Convincing athlete to commit to robotics?
 

This part is also true of sports and other activities, however, if that's included in the definition of "going pro". Varsity basketball develops a large number of skills besides just bouncing a ball, to use Dean's phrase. The difference is really STEM focused.