[cadandcookies]

Things to keep in mind, gleaned over a year competing in FLL and two mentoring as a student:

1: Have the parents (and teacher/student mentors) read the FLL mentor manual! It helps so much, and there's a ton of great advice in there!

2: Along the same lines, read the game manual! Despite the lower complexity, FLL does have very particular rules, much like FRC and FTC-- know them, and if it's a middle school team, make sure all the kids know them. It will save you so many headaches.

3: Make sure you don't have too many kids (or make sure you have enough mentors). I once mentored three teams of ten kids each that met in the same gym, with one teacher and a couple of rather apathetic parents. The teams were third, fourth, and fifth graders, and it was absolute chaos, but worse, almost nothing actually got done. At the end of the "season," we had one and a half robots done. Starting small the first year is a good idea.

4: Remember that the season starts late August/early September! If at all possible, organize a "kickoff" and brainstorming session with the kids, especially if it's a middle school team. It can be very difficult to get kids to focus after they have a full field (which reminds me, make sure to make building the field a fun team-building activity-- it's a good way to give kids that aren't experienced a bit of time building before they start the robot). Along with this comes a warning-- don't burn your kids out, keep a realistic schedule and stick to it. A lot of lessons from FRC also apply to FLL. Try to make sure the kids are having fun as much as possible.

5: Don't forget about non-robot activities! Practice core values challenges and spend as much time on your project as your robot! This is a great way to get kids that might not necessarily be interested in robotics into the program and STEM (again, FRC similarities).

As for support...
My team currently mentors or supports about 20 FLL teams (a number which we've built up over the course of the last five years or so). Support for FLL teams, even among those we support, is highly variable. To some teams, we've loaned laptops with the NXT program on them, to others, we've loaned full kits for the season. We also have student mentors that stay with teams, sometimes over multiple seasons. Funds for these kits were procured from a grant we wrote to our local Rotary Club, specifically for building FLL in our area.

Good luck, I hope you guys have as much fun with FLL as I have!