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Originally Posted by 2544HCRC
I see the same sort of thing happening in FRC. Our kids aren't that into robots or robotics. The dozen or so kids that are part of the team will commit (kind of) to a 6 week build season and do a little fundraising, but overall it's a side thing. (...snip...) FRC is becoming more and more competative. Practice bots, multiple regionals, etc, etc, are all leaving the casual teams further and further behind. I'm sure in some minds that's a good thing but if the goal is to expose kids to STEM in an engaging way I see it as very limiting.
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Yes, all these things would leave a casual team behind. However, no one said it was going to be easy if you want to compete at the highest levels. You can certainly build a kit bot, and can effectively compete with a well built one. FRC 1114 has a great series of videos and a iPad/iPhone app that will help a team to achieve those kinds of goals - just do a search on "Kitbot on steroids". Our team, as well as many others, work with local teams to assist them to build a robot like that as well, sometimes on the Thursday of the competition. Teams that build a kit bot, go to a local regional, compete against teams from around the world, seem to enjoy themselves and say "That was fun, I'll do it again next year." So there is a place for a casual team to be in FRC, just don't expect to compete at the same level as teams who work a lot harder than that. Would you expect a high school football team to be successful if team members only showed up on Friday night, expecting to be the starting quarterback? Why don't kids who play HS Varsity sports complain about the number of days they have practice - because they expect to work that hard if they want to be on the team. Why should we expect less for our teams?
I admit, we had a similar attitude many years ago. We did a little in the fall, we built the robot in 6 weeks, went to a regional, had a team dinner, and said, see you next year. We had 20 kids or so, who were "committed" at the level you mention. A couple of years ago, we decided working 10-12 weeks a year wasn't enough. If we wanted to really compete, we needed to have a year-round program. Our season now officially starts the day after our end-of-year team dinner. Since then, we have started to see the fruits of those labors. Instead of burning out mentors, we have now seen a growth in the number of mentors, who work longer hours. We have seen a growth in the number of kids actively participating on the team. We have 50+ kids who now are at almost every meeting, working their way through our training program, and into the team leadership. Twice, we have come within a single poorly timed penalty, from winning a regional. We have won the Regional Chairman's Award. We also won, with our FTC Team, the 2010 World Championship. We aren't in the highest levels of competition, yet, but we committed to working harder and harder every day to get closer and closer to being at that level.
How do you do that? How do you build a team like that. It's simple - Do your homework. It is our primary job to change the culture around us. When we were still a "casual" team, and long before we started seeing any level of success, we were in the Elementary schools, at the county fair, at Relay for Life, in the libraries, hosting training seminars, etc..... doing Dean's homework in our community.
Now, we engage more kids in STEM then ever before. When I see kids at our many outreach events, they will ask me "When can I be a RoboBee?"