[aldowyn]

Almost half your team was gone during one of the qualifiers, and you were doing well enough to get into the elimination rounds? Huh, that's just odd to me.

With our team, at both our regionals our entire team (all 18- of us) was involved the entire time, whether it was on the drive team, watching over the pit, or just cheering in the stands. Of course, we were a heck of a lot more excited in the elimination rounds and award ceremonies in Dallas (We exploded when we won one of the matches in the semifinals against the first-seeded alliance, who ridiculously outclassed us, and after we won the All-Star award one of the volunteers had to tell us to slow down heading down to the arena if we won anything else)

At the championship, though, there was quite a bit more non-team related stuff going on. I mean, there was so much stuff in the pits! There's also the part where we had accepted a LONG time ago that we didn't have a chance at St. Louis.

In general, like someone above said, if the students invest themselves in the robot, they will want to continue to do so, no matter in how small a way or how well it's doing.