pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

I am so proud of G.R.R.'s rookies this year. They stuck with it and built an awesome robot and acted like a veteren team does. They are pictured with Mr. Becker, G.R.R.'s WFA nominee. A man that has worked so hard for both teams this year.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

"The Rookies", as we call them did amazing well! They had an awesome robot, and they conducted themself with such great gracious professionalism!

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

They had some great role models.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

They put up a few Keepers too; best "rookie" auton mode I've seen. Its amazing how seamlessly 340 split its team into 2 teams, producing 2 unique, great robots and giving thier students more hands-on experience with the build process.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

Thanks for the props. I have some amazing kids & mentors. You guys Rock. I really enjoyed talking with your team. It's nice to learn some new stuff. You have a great team. Any thoughts on starting a second?

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

The MOE Robotics Group is an open group for students from an ever changing list of high schools (this system evolved from our Boy Scouts Explorer Post origins). This year we have students from 18 different High Schools (including home school, check out the pennants on our website). These schools are both public and private (Northern Delaware has a LOT of small private schools) and in different states. The most traveled student was a home schooler from Central PA who joined via our website.

We strive to start teams at the high schools of our members. Teams 1370 at Middletown HS and 1495 at Avon Grove (our largest contributors at the time, my Alma Mater and second FIRST team) are a couple of teams at high schools that used to contribute students to our team. This year we also started a VEX team for freshmen. Our enrollment is still close to our average (~35 students). However, with the local FLL Pipeline continuing to grow, who knows? You know how great ideas in FIRST spread, so MOE2 could be a future consideration.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

great team, great bot, great mentors, great town, and so on...

We should have a 12 team collaboration next year. let's see how hard it is to lose to an alliance of all the same robots as yours. that would be crazy!

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

I would love to do the collaboration with all of the local teams like we did this year. 2 teams, 2 different robots. 12 teams, 12 different robots but everyone working to help each other. That would be cool. I bet the FLR would be the regional to beat.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

how many teams we have in rochester now?

hopefully include one more to that list. :P
I am thinking about a chassis of my own. make a mix of 179/1889, 234, 1126, 1369, and a few others.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

I really think the idea of g.r.r. 2 was a good one. Robotics this year at fairport high school has finally surpassed the size of our varisity football team and it will grow larger. Saying that we could consider splitting the team into two in the following years.

Maybe call it... Red Lightning.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

Go Bruce!!! nuff said!

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

If you've got the mentor resources and the sanity, I highly recommend the split. Cheering in 15 matches on Friday was exhausting and exhilarating. Thursday night watching the two robots in a practice round together made my heart smile. The bouncing off of ideas was great, seeing so many people all working on something all the time was awesome.

I've said it before (maybe not here, since I'm a lurker) and I'll say it again, Splitting into two teams only brought us more together as a team.

If you need help in pursuing this option, we'd love to help you out. :)

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

YES!
Please come talk to us if you have any questions! Any one of us would love to sit down and talk to you about what we did on GRR!!!

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

The biggest issue around splitting isn't manpower but money and facilities - how did you handle these?

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

Rees will better answer this, but we have a large tech wing at the school. Both teams worked there. There was some back ups at the mill and welder, but other than that, there was plenty of room.

For the money, the rookie team only does the local regional. By taking a smaller group of kids to Nationals, the money was close to being a wash.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

We actually spent about $6000 less this year than we did last year. As Kate pointed out not taking 45 kids to Atlanta is saving us money. We probably could have made one team, one smaller team, and gone to multiple regionals and championship but that's not what FIRST means to us. We are about the process not the results. The results were pretty good though.

If you are interested in how this worked for us I will start working on a white paper. I have everything to put it together.

Re: pic: G.R.R.'s Rookies (and WFA Nominee)
 

Very Carefully. :]

As Kate mentioned, the biggest problem was the lines waiting for the mill and the welder. But, we did make a sign up sheet posted next to both so students could sign up to use them.
We actually had 3 teams in our school at once. Team 73 was there most Saturdays working along side of us.
340 is pretty student self sufficient. We only had a few mentors working with us, while the rookies (424) had most of them. So the mentor man power was pretty evenly split up.
As far as money is concerned... Bausch and Lomb. They have repeatably been a blessing to our team. They have helped us to become what we are...