No advice -- just a "feeling in the same boat" post!
We're also a rookie team who are lucky enough to have committed students and great mentors. But we're definitely entering stressed mode (well, the mentors are -- many of the students are not stressed!
). We deliberately chose to be 100% rookie (students, mentors, parents) and are dealing with all 8th-10th graders which is great in many ways as we create our FRC team foundation but we're all working pretty hard to figure out how to get this done (the light seems far away some nights!).
From a cRIO that burnt out a fuse when we took the robot for a test run Saturday night and no known date for getting a replacement from NI due to out of stocks -- to needing some banebot motors/gearboxes that we didn't realize we needed until they were sold out everywhere we've looked, we're hoping that we've got a demonstratable robot for a public JCPenney display on the 19th!
Lots of learning and thinking through the process for students and mentors right now! And not much sleep as FRC permeates every waking moment.