Our team took the the plunge 3 years ago, Fall of 2010, when I joined as a freshman and said we weren't good enough. It wasn't just me, but my friends as well all agreed that we were not competing at the caliber of teams like 254, and 971. Noobs to FRC, we didn't know too much, but we knew if they could do it, we could as well, and the current team of 8 people (3 of which were mentors) didn't think so ("Don't have the money, they're funded by NASA, etc etc). So, I decided that the mediocre job we were doing wasn't good enough, and set out to learn as much as I could about this "FRC" in which I had joined (Start: My 10 posts a day on CD period) so I could make my team better. 3 years later, we're starting to make a name for ourselves, and have rebuilt the team's culture. We're not quite the hardcore dedicated to robotics only team I'd like us to be, but we've gotten far from where we started as a 5-student club where mentors had to build the robot so that the team would have something to work with by our 2nd match.

What caused the change? A group of (good looking) students who didn't like the current regime and wanted something better. Sorta like how history goes. In our case, it was all students pushing for the change, but in most cases, it takes inspired mentors to do so as well. Inspiring mentors is harder than it seems. Trust me, I know.