[EricH]

Originally Posted by Dragonbots

We don't have an official mentoring team; though, we do have one engineer from the Navy assisting us. I've also been contacting a few universities who might be willing to mentor us during the FIRST season.

You're in L.A. You might do well to contact some of the veteran Los Angeles teams to serve as a mentor team for you--kind of show you the ropes, or exactly what you're getting into. (Trust me, there are quite a few that will be willing to work with you--I was on one of the mentoring teams in the Beach Cities/South Bay area in high school.)