[Ichlieberoboter]

Originally Posted by jprince58

As for individual members, there is a lot more discrepancy. For the middle-ground sports/FRC teams, the average Joe athlete probably puts in more hours than the average Joe FRC student. Again though, I think FRC is top-heavy here. The most committed members of FRC teams put in hours that could almost never be touched by even the most committed athletes (that actually, you know, go to school). And a lot of that just comes down to oppurtunity. Whereas an athlete really only has from 4-7 am and 3-11 pm on an average school day, and 4 am to 11pm on days off, an FRC member has a lot more hours to put in. For FRC, especially if you are on more of the "business" side of your team, you can basically work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if your body would let you. I know I personally spent more time on FRC between the hours of 11pm and 4 am my senior year than I spent practicing for cross country any single year. And FRC can occur year round if you are more of a chairmans team, while many sports are just one season. At the end of the day, the FRC individual commitment has the potential to be, and is, much more top-heavy than sports, while middle-ground favors athletics.

Yes. I am on chairmans and website and programming and it's legit non-stop. Like I do varsity tennis and take indoor lessons throughout the winter and spring two hours a day twice a week and over the summer I do a league that practices 4 hours a day twice a week and then in the fall we practice 3-5:30 every day after school and compete twice a week and I can still say without a doubt that I spend about 3 times as much time on FRC as I do on tennis. I work on the website a lot and plan drives and fundraisers and work on the app we made about FIRST robotics and keep track of the countries we reach and which ones are third world countries and watch YouTube videos on programming and a lot of other things about 4 hours a day, every day, no exaggeration. Off season. On season, I do it pretty much 24/7. Even during class I sit and make lists of countries and outreach and updates I could make, etc. And I'm not even one of the top teams like 1678 and 341 and 2826.