Combining of Teams
 

What are the pros and cons of combining 2 teams, how do competitions recognize it, Can we combine 2 teams and keep one of other teams # but change the name?

Re: Combining of Teams
 

This link on the FIRST website should help answer your questions about the technical parts of combining teams:

http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...ndCombines.pdf

Re: Combining of Teams
 

Funny you should be asking on Chief Delphi's forum. Chief Delphi and the Husky Brigade combined a few years ago to form Wings of Fire.
Two of the high schools in Pontiac, MI combined due to enrollment and cutbacks. The schools were fierce rivals across the board, didn't get along, and had violence break out occasionally. Since the schools combined, the teams combined. The team was a major catalyst in promoting unity and acceptance across the school. It's a really touching and inspiring story that I can't explain as well as most.
As far as the numbers, 47+65=51. I have no idea what the reasoning is behind it, but it was a good call to get a new number and image when so drastically changing the composition of the team. The students from the other team would have felt alienated if it'd stayed as 47 or 65.

Re: Combining of Teams
 

I believe FIRST's reasoning was that they wanted to indicate that the team was not a rookie, so they chose a nearby, unassigned number from the 1998 sequence (alphabetically by sponsor, as of 1998; these numbers are used today, although the assignment algorithm for new teams has changed repeatedly). 51 was probably originally intended a team that never ended up competing—hence the number was not reserved for any particular organization.

Re: Combining of Teams
 

If it needs to be done to keep FIRST in the lives of ALL of the students,
Do it. It couldn't have turned out any better for us.

Re: Combining of Teams
 

That's in interesting story, the reason I'm asking is becuase a school in my district is small and has problems with getting a teacher to sponsor them and we thought it would be a good idea to meld i guess since they are good with hardware and we are the same with coding and we cover our week spots. The problem is we don't know if we want to keep a number we already have or change it becuase we don't know if we are going to be recognized and stuff like that but the information posted did help us figure out the details so thanks guys. :)