Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

We're encouraging any member that would like to go to go. Right now, we have 45 members of 75 committed. 6 of our 8 mentors are going.

Our financial aid and scholarships are based on three factors: 1) financial need, 2) commitment, 3) amount raised over the course of the season. There is a core 10 students that need to be there (drive team, Chairman's team, build/programming officers), another 10 or so that should be there (future officers, additional scouts), and the others are a separate tier.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

Our team brings anyone who is eligible to go. You must meet a required amount of quality hours put in, meet your fundraising goal, and meet a few other requirements such as your grades, attitude and team participation, in order to go of course but we bring as many students as we can so that they can experience every possible aspect to FIRST.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

The FIRST Championships provides the opportunity to see the really big picture of the FIRST programs. Our team works really hard to insure that every student on the team has an opportunity to see that big picture at least once in his/her time on the team, if that is their desire. We also think that parents and mentors gain a greater perspective and understanding of the programs by attending the event at least once.

We have requirements that the students must meet such as maintaining passing grades and giving service hours to the team. We try to encourage the students to keep up and do their part so that they can participate in this amazing event.

We also work very hard to insure that we have funds available for the registration(s) and the travel for the seasons that we are attending or hoping to attend. That is something that I'm reading a lot about - how rookies do not have the plans/funding in place to help them if they've qualified to attend. We all need to get better at getting that word out sooner rather than later in helping them prepare for the potential opportunities of the competition season.

Jane

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

Since we are such a small team, we bring every student because every student has a job to do at Nationals. Plus, we try to make sure that every student gets to experience it when we do go. We only have 11 students on our team, so it makes it a tiny bit easier. We each had to raise $1300 to cover the cost of the two regionals and Championships (we had some big donations that we get almost every year which brought our requirement down to $1300). We also bring about 10-15 mentors/parents with us. I believe this year the total number of people who are going to be on the plane to St. Louis on Wednesday is 22.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

We have time requirements as well. Each student fills out a daily time sheet, that we look at and review to make sure that they are meeting those requirements. However, this year, because our State mandated testing is on the week of Championships, we will only be bringing 4 students. Our three drivers and my one Chairman's presenter.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

This year, since we won the Palmetto Regional, the SC Department of Education gave us a grant to attend Championship. (They've awarded this grant to South Carolina teams that pull it off since at least 2007; I think they also reach out to the award-based qualifiers as well, but I can't confirm.)

As such (and combined with the fact that we're a little light-handed this year), we'll be taking all the students who've been traveling to regionals and can make the trip.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

Team 1802 is a relatively small team, 20 members at the max (and I don't think we've ever hit that for more than a few weeks until someone quits). The first year, and only year, we have qualified for championship we took everyone. This ended up being 40+ people including parents. Our airfare was $18,000 alone. It was horrible to keep track of everyone, we actually had a miscommunication and had a student get lost in Atlanta during the Finale and had to locate our hotel by himself (not knowing the name of it or any of our phone numbers).

This year we became more strict on how to attend regionals. We had a time sheet for them to log hours, they had to log 70% of the hours in our season. This would have been criteria for championships too if we had made it to compete. Plus due to lack of funds currently there may have been some financial contribution to attend also.

Since we are only are in the running for website this year we are taking 2 of our promising freshmen to give them a better understanding of FIRST.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

Seeing as we only have about 25 members on the team each year (it's a small school), we take anyone who wants to go. Some students can't make it (grades, other commitments, or they already missed too much school from past competitions and other activities), but we're ensuring everyone who wants to go has that chance. Each student does have to pay their way (or go through existing school structure for financial aid for the trip), but we're working on fundraising activities over the summer that can let them earn refunds for the cost of the trip.

Of course, this is our first time making it to Championships, so I think we might have thrown the rules out the window :p

At the start of the year, we laid out attendance requirements for team members. X number of hours in order to be able to travel with the team to Duluth and X+Y number of hours to be part of the pit crew - overall, it worked out pretty well. Better than past years, where everyone would gravitate towards the pit and leave us with no scouters in the stands!

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

We have been lucky enough to go to CMP for the past 5 years...
After the first year we decided that CMP would be for the upperclassmen only. The reason for this is that it is a big burden for parents to have to come up with plane tickets for 4 years...

We take about half the team this way...this year we have about 18 students traveling...

We are looking at this right now. We are going to discuss a separate requirement that will not allow a team member to go unless they have been on the team for at least 1 year...

We haven't really had a problem with juniors coming in just to travel... but we want to head of this potentiality...

We fund raise to come to CMP every year... being in Seattle we have to make travel arrangements early so this makes sense for us...
If we ever have a year that we don't qualify we have decided to come and volunteer anyway....

So far we haven't had to do that... we have qualified 7 times in 5 years.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

On RUSH, everyone is expected to attend all of the competitions we go to. Of course, there are exceptions if you have important previous commitments, but besides that, the only reason a student wouldn't attend is if they have grades below a C-.

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams
 

Because we come from such a far way (last year we became the "most traveled FRC team" by just going to 1 regional and Championships!), traveling is fairly pricey. To compensate for this, we offer a team subsidy for mentors/students who qualify and wish to attend. This year we increased the amount people had to pay to attend which allowed us to take more students.

Please see the chart below for specific events:

2010 GSR: ~35 people
2010 Championships: 4 mentors, 2 mascots, and 8 students (total of 14 people)
2011 Hawaii Regional: ~50 people
2011 Championships: 5 mentors, 16 students (total of 21 people)

Re: Whole Teams or Sub Teams