[nathan_hui]

I understand exactly how the OP feels. Essentially, "I've put a couple years of my life into this. Please don't make it seem like it was a waste of my time". Keeping a team alive is actually very dependent on the people actually running the team. Probably unlike you, I had the unfortunate luck to have taken over my team after three to four years of really low success (low morale, high turnover in students, extremely low quality work). I also had the unfortunate luck to have been able to work with my team for the year after I left, where I saw the team fall apart again. After talking with my mentors, and some people who specialize in forming teams, it seems pretty clear why teams fall apart. The one biggest challenge to having a successful team is finding a really good leader. As in an actual leader, not the popular kid on the block, not the smartest guy on the team, but the guy who can really push everyone to do their best, the guy who can put aside any personal relationships with the team and really get the team in line, the guy who has the drive to do 200% of what he/she expects from the team. But it can't just be a leader who can really drive people, it's got to be someone who can reach out to people and convince them that doing robotics isn't only fun and cool, but worth it, and then actually make robotics worth it for those people.

Why do teams fall apart? One way is failure in the leadership. Several years of bad leadership, and pretty soon, the team will loose its recruiting pool's interest. Another way is attrition. If the leadership can't make Robotics worth the time of its members, they'll find something else to do. And if the leadership keeps doing that year after year, people figure it out. Yet another way is internal politics. And lack of training. The list goes on and on.

So what is it that you need? My answer is this: a strong group of student leaders who can work as a team, backed by a group of very motivated and involved mentors, working with a motivated group of students. On top of that, there has to be a training pipeline for the students, a clear chance for students to rise through the ranks, and visible opportunities for the students to specialize in the team, no matter what it is they are doing. There has to be a sense of community between the team members, with the student leaders being the big brothers, the other students being the younger siblings, and the mentors being the elders.

This isn't a simple problem to fix. The environment you are in does not allow for the formation of a very good team. The maximum retention of any student is 4 years, 5 if they take a gap year and stick around. The pressure of high school and the social environment don't help any. It takes a year or two to train a student to be fully proficient, at which point they promptly get eaten up with AP/IB exams, college applications, and senioritis. It's hard to find students who understand how to lead, how to teach, how to organize, and how to drive people.

People have found solutions. Not saying that they're good, not saying that those solutions are sustainable, but there are solutions. Look at some of the teams in The New Cool. Some of the successful teams are highly sustainable, but they aren't your team. However, they are good sources of inspiration.

The main team in that book has the program integrated with the curriculum. This makes FRC the equivalent of the senior design project at many engineering universities. It is the culmination of four years of study. But this doesn't work for most schools. But there's a lesson here, which is the training pipeline. If you can start early, you have a real chance of getting people excited and involved for a very long time. So and start FTC teams in your feeder schools or in the community. Start FLL teams at the elementary schools. Reach out to the community, and get involved with the maker community for help, resources, and inspiration, and inspire the maker community as well.