I am also planning to start a new team. But I place heavy emphasis on the word, "Planning".

I'll be graduating from college in August. That means that I'll be a very new employee during the 2004 FIRST competition. So, for next year I'm planning to do the Team 000 thing and vollunteer at one or two regionals and nats. Then I will spend 2005 putting the team support structure together. Hopefully I will be able to get the high school and sponsorship tasks taken care of in time for the '05 kickoff. We'll see.

I expect that like most projects, this one will take much more time than I initially estimate. As long as I get a team started in the next five years, I'll consider it a success. But it may turn out that I run into an existing team in need of engineering support before then.

-Joel

High school students are involved, but they don't have a high school supporting them. It's rare, but not unheard of.

<edit> Here's a link to another thread about starting new teams ... I posted, there, what I'm doing to try to start a new team up here. Hope it helps!

I need tips for starting a new team </edit>

- Katie

I may be wrong about this - but Im pretty sure when you register your team for a FIRST event, you are required to supply information from the associated high school - faculty point of contact, schools address, principles name...

and you are required to have agreement from the school for students to be out of class to attend events, to travel, liability waviers, ect ect ect.

Unless Im mistaken, if you do not have a high school participating, you must have misrepresented yourself when you registered the team - and you would not be a valid FIRST team.

Someone correct me if Im misinformed here. It would be really cool if a bunch of kids and adults could get together and form their own team, or if a church group, or boyscout troop, whoever - could start a FIRST team

but Im 99.99% certain that you cant do that!

You can do it
 

I didn't read all of this thread, but it looks like you got a lot of responces on what you need to do. I started a team this year with help from friends and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't mean to discourage you - I actually want to let you know that you can do it and give you a little advice: remember to exploit all your resources! If you have a question or you need something - post it on the forums and you'll be in the clear in no time.

Good luck!

I don't think you have to be from a high school to have a FIRST team. I think 365 was part of an explorer post at one point, and there are a few others like them that weren't officially part of a school.

Team 365 was a long standing Boy Scout Explorer Post operating with Dupont before it was a FIRST team. An Explorer Post is a coed division of the Boy Scouts to give students experience in engineering (you know building bridge models and such). In late 1999, members of the Explorer Post decided to participate in FIRST, and The Miracle Workerz were born. The team was officially affiliated with the Boy Scout Explorer Post until 2002, when the Boy Scouts withdrew sponsorship. We officially changed the name of our school from Boy Scout Explorer Post to MOE Robotics Group. We created MOE Robotics Group to encompass the ever-changing group of high school students that join our team.

This year we had 34 high school students from 15 different high schools across Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Also 3 of the students are home schooled, one travels 2 hr to attend meetings. We recruit with assemblies at high schools. We get hundreds of interested people that sign our contact sheets. We never have had to cut people since the list naturally weeds itself down to the ones willing to commit the time and effort required to build a robot. We got many new schools this year but we also lost a couple as the only members from that school graduated.

I used to attend Avon Grove in PA when I was a student on the team, instead of a mentor from UD. Avon Grove for many years was the majority school on the team. Andy Triboletti (now on 125 in Northeastern U) from Avon Grove started the AG presence by asking Jake (now at Drexel and our comp team coach) to drive him to Beech Street Engineering Center (MOE HQ) in Wilmington to attend Explorer Post meetings. Jake and a couple of their friends decided to also attend the Explorer Post meetings with Andy. They were all enthusiastic about becoming a FIRST team. I joined second year as a junior after talking to the guys and watching the assembly. I've been hooked ever since.

We have a minimal connection to the high schools. We get permission from them for absences and to hold assemblies. Some students that have dress codes at their school get permission to dye their hair and wear the team jersey. :D The schools provide no sponsorship or official support. As for waivers, Dupont has us sign Hold Harmless Agreements since the Boy Scouts withdrew insurance coverage. Dupont Engineering now solely responsible for the team. Jim Porter, VP of Engineering at Dupont, is very supportive of the team, and comes to some meetings and completions. He spoke at Drexel last year. John LaRock is the team's leader and founder. His devotion to the team earned him the Volunteer of the Year award last year at Drexel.

My principal at AG loved to take credit for the accomplishments of the many prominent AG members on the team, especially after we won nationals. In the 2001 National Champion season, AG students held positions like Captain, Driver, Operator, and nearly half the Pit Crew. All my principal ever did was sign a piece of paper and otherwise make things difficult. When we tried to start a team at AG, the school board loved the idea but he turned into a giant road block. If he was in charge of our team it wouldn't have lasted a year.

Unfortunately, you were misinformed Ken. That 0.01% uncertainty was correct, we can have a team without an school officially participating. My team is not misrepresented or invalid, we just accept any student who comes to us ready to learn about engineering. FIRST is for high school students, not high school administration. The great leadership of Dupont Engineers and the MOE Boosters (parents, some of alumni) keep our unique team alive. All you need for a FIRST team is dedicated students and leaders. This is the true spirit of FIRST: total commitment to advancing science and technology among our great nation's youth.

Georgia Tech help
 

To all those of you willing to help start teams,

The GT FIRST group at Georgia Tech has been working on starting FIRST teams for the last 3 years. We have helped start 17 teams total over those last 3 years. I would be more than happy to help those who want to start teams with tips.

The biggest thing if you are going to start one through the school is the find a professor to help you out. They have the contacts with the higher ups in the schools that can get you sponsorship.
The next big challenge is to find a high school teacher that will help you. One that will be commited to the program and understands the time commitment.

Please let me know if you would like more help. I probably have some old letters and presentations from last year. Just understand that this is not an easy thing to do. For most of us who have started teams, it is an uphill battle all the way. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't work right away. If anything, get some people from the college and local high schools to competitions (maybe some of the off season ones).

umm
 

ummm it all seem quite over whelming.. but yet a very followable process of requirements.... ummm interesting

Well.. Seeing as people are talking about starting robotics clubs, I guess I'll post this here :)


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=20069

Team 857 gets almost all of our 'high school' support through the school district, not individual schools. Student from any of the local high schools are invited to join as well as anyone else willing to drive to our meetings. ;)

Another example of a team without high school support is team 68, Truck Town (Terror) Thunder.

T3 has drawn students from the same high schools as teams 27, 33, 245, 302, 308, 1010, 1240, and probably a bunch more I can't recall.

Adam

Adam and Brian,

thanks for the enlightenment :c)

I worked with a couple other engineers from Xerox last fall attempting to start a new team here in Rochester, NY.

Xerox was willing to FULLY sponsor the new team, at the same level as their current (12 year) team, the X-cats.

Everything worked out great except one small detail - we could not get a single teacher at the highschool to sign up to be the single point contact for the year, so we could not start a team there.

In our school districts (we were told) you cannot have an official school function unless one or more teachers are present at all meetings. Xerox took their sponsorship to another local HS, Webster, and started the SPARX team instead (who won the Cleveland regional BTW).

We have 6 local teams in the Rochester area, and all are completely independant from each other (except the two Xerox teams who share some resources).

It seems obvious to me the best way to optimize local teams would be to have a central location, one facility, one machine shop, one playfield, with separate meeting rooms - multiple teams could hold meetings there, share bus rides to regionals, ect.

Sounds like you have done exactly that - a team that spans several schools. I would love to see something like that here in Rochester, NY - we have many Highschools without teams - being able to be a member of a centralized team would be a great start, as a the team grows in size, we can break it up into multiple teams.

I hear Xerox is thinking of sponsoring a THIRD team next year - Im going to look into this - maybe we can make it be a city wide, or county wide team.

Thanks again for the info, this really opens a lot of doors!

I could see a team made up from a combination of Franklin, School of the Arts, School Without Walls and the Charter schools. East is such a big school they could go it alone.
As for the suburbs a compliation of the Greece schools or the Pittsford schools could work. Or a combination of the Catholic schools McQuaid, Aquainas, Mercy and Bishp Kearney.
Maybe Xerox could pick up Churchville even if Nortel really did dump them.

Just to let you know, when you click on the link it brings you to "htpp://" ...

- Katie

That's a bad omen...

Thanks
 

Arr!! BAD OMEN?? I don't like that sort of stuff. That's the link just I didn't put the link in.. I put it as the link name just not as the link. Stupid me. Thanks for telling me ;)

Robotics at UCF

I don't want to start a new FIRST team, (at least not yet), just assist the neighboring ones. There are many pretty close. Also, I want to see more robotics projects at UCF now that we have a regional here.