[Nemo]

After having both FTC and FRC for a few years, I've concluded that they're best run separately in many respects. Students and mentors still help each other out across teams and share other resources. But I find it best to have students assigned to one competition or the other for the entire school year so FTC doesn't end up consuming the entire preseason for the FRC team. Both programs have a bunch of stuff they can be doing in the off-season*, and it's tough to do that stuff when the overlapping seasons run all the way from September through April.

Also, I don't view FTC as a junior varsity sport that feeds into FRC. Some people switch at some point, but many pick one program and stick with it for their high school career. That's good, because it's good for the team to have some people with 3-4 years of experience on the team. Whatever path the students want to follow is fine with me.

Given the choice, some people at our school do choose FTC over FRC for a number of possible reasons: less travel cost (in Iowa, at least), smaller team, less daunting technologies, different build season schedule. Once they're in FTC, they often don't want to be "promoted" to FRC. They have taken a good level of ownership of their FTC team, they've been successful, and they want to continue on and achieve even more in the next season.

*such as it is