[JSpurlin]

This will be the 5th year we have held GRITS in Georgia. Each year we add something new and do something different. Here are a couple of ideas you may want to steal - and please feel free to share your ideas, so that we can make our event even better!

We have invited any of the new FRC 2014-2015 teams to GRITS. When the students arrive we pair them up with teams that are competing. We ask the competing teams to help them learn about FIRST. We allow one additional newbie per team to be in the alliance station for a match. Later in the day we ask them to be the human player - and it goes on. Some even allow the newbies to drive the robot. It is truly exciting.

This one we started last year: "Shadow a Ref". We paired students up with refs for 2-3 games. The ref explained the things they were looking for and how they call a foul. We started this for the newbies, but older teams quickly asked to be included. It truly is eye opening seeing what a ref has to do in one of these games.

Hope this gives you some ideas and I hope others will share too!