Hello, I am from FRC team 2614 from Morgantown, West Virginia. We were a rookie team in 2008, coming from an area where teams have folded due to everything from lack of funding to interfering with basketball, so we know how hard it can be to start and sustain a team. Here's some advice on an organizational/sustainability standpoint:
-Communication is the biggest. I have seen many clubs/organizations (outside robotics) that have died because of lack of communication. Our team has an email ListServ that has proven to be an immensely helpful tool (we are getting approx. 20-30 robotics emails a day on a slow day).
-Keep your community informed about what you are doing. Write to your local paper and explain what FIRST is (I'm assuming there are no other FRC teams in your area?). Write to your local businesses and invite them to see your progress (and get some spare change on the side). Hold an open house before ship date to demo the robot to the community. There are endless possibilities, but if you can get your community behind you, that's a big factor in sustaining a team.
-Keep all members involved. Specialization is the key. While you don't have to have a strict specialization setup (we don't), it is a good way to keep everyone involved in something.
-Brainstorming before building. We just started cutting metal last weekend. Weigh pros and cons of everything several times, and draw everything out beforehand. Planning is everything.
-There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a "rookie" approach to the game. We did that our rookie year, and ended up winning a regional as a passive and defensive bot. From what I have seen, rookie teams that don't try to tackle every aspect of the game (i.e. Maybe not getting all three rows, etc.) have done much better than rookie teams that try to do everything. I'm not saying your team does not have the capability, because I wouldn't know. I'm not trying to be judgmental, but it's just what I've seen. Every team was a rookie once before, right? They all know what it's like and understand.
-Getting advice from older teams, just like you are doing with this thread, is very important. At competitions, the other teams are more than willing to help with anything. We've just about built whole robots for other teams at competitions, so no amount of help is too much to ask for. Go around and ask them to explain how their machines work and why they chose to tackle the challenge the way they did. You can learn A LOT from these discussions and pictures of their machines.
As far as problems we have run into, I can't think of anything that would have changed anything drastically. There is a lot of little stuff that we eventually overcame. It's all a part of the experience, though.
Our rookie year, we met as a team for the first time the day of kickoff. There were 11 of us and 2 mentors; we didn't know each other, as we came from two cross-town rival schools. We had no idea what we were doing. We were just a disorganized group of high school students that met together over the weekends. But we emerged as a close group of friends. We ended up winning not only the regional, but also the Rookie All-Star Award as well. We ahve grown substantially since then. Anyway, I apologize, I didn't mean to ramble about my team. But what I'm trying to say is that anything is possible. If we could do it, you can do it. And, you have succeeded even if you come home without a single trophy. You became a part of the FIRST community, and had a great adventure and learning experience. That takes some serious effort and that alone deserves great recognition. It will only get better from here.
I'm sorry I wrote so much, but I hope it was helpful. Welcome to FIRST, guys! And good luck this year! Feel free to email me if you have any further questions at
alexkstout@gmail.com