[RRLedford]

I am starting my 5th year as primary mentor at an Illinois school where the same small robotics team has done both the FTC and FRC programs in each of the prior four years.

In my estimate, having the same group of students doing both programs is potentially more of a liability than a benefit for their participation in either program ending up considered as a success, especially with the new increased overlapping of the FTC & FRC seasons that the super-regionals demands

Being in Illinois, with the earliest FTC qualifying competitions, means our FTC time constraints are tougher than with FTC in other states. In the past this meant we would wrap up all our FTC competition (excluding Worlds) before FRC kickoff, but this is no longer possible if we can qualify for the FTC super-regional.

The ~6-week time window for FRC build always proves to be an extreme challenge, with both finals week and full week breaks often taking a huge time bites out of the build schedule. Dealing with this is extreme FRC time pressuer is barely possible for our team, and to now have FTC overlapping means that, even if we qualified, we would likely have to bail out of the FTC super regional competition.

For most students on our team, going to Worlds during at least one of their four years is a big goal, and to them this seems most likely ONLY via the FTC program. However, they now must consider that any route to FTC worlds will likely undermine their FRC season, or meeting the FRC season timeline demands will prevent a strong finish with their FTC season.

This becomes a major dilemma, since building the bigger robot has big appeal, but getting to Worlds via FTC also has big appeal.

From a mentor perspective, I find that doing both programs allows very little time to teach much in either program, which is frustrating.

Assuming a school has a large enough team and sufficient numbers of mentors, so that enough time can be devoted to both programs during the overlap period, then it could turn out favorably,

Now that the range of materials allowed for FTC has been expanded, the potential carryover for things learned in FTC benefiting students going on to FRC is much greater.

So, for many reasons, doing FTC as a lead in preparing for FRC can become problematic, but in some cases it could still end up being a positive result.

-Dick Ledford