[Jon Stratis]

I've seen many veteran teams have a "second rookie year" at one point or another. Either they have a large batch of seniors graduate, preceded by poor recruitment, or they lose one or more critical mentors... Regardless of how it happens, it can be tough to go from a strong team to a poor performance year. And it can be hard for a single student to fix if the mentors aren't on board.

Now, there's no single right way to design and build a robot. Every team does it differently. Up until this year, all major design decisions for my team were made by popular vote. That didn't really work out last year, so our student leadership decided to make a change and design with a 5 person design team this year. It would be very easy for someone not on the design team to come up with complaints very similar to yours - "a strong team that won awards and performed well every year of its existence suddenly did horribly last year and didn't win a single award. Now most of the team is being shut out of the design process...". But that perspective doesn't really represent the good progress we've seen from the team this year to bounce back from last year.

Instead of focusing on what's changed, focus on what needs to happe:. A design needs to be chosen and you need to start building. Approach the team leadership (preferably with a strong group of like-minded individuals behind you" and express your concern and desire for things to work out. Ask them to simply set a decision deadline so you can start building. That's all, a nice simple request. You aren't asking for your design to be chosen, you aren't asking to change the way things are being run - asking for either of those can appear as a challenge to someone's leadership and make them reluctant to listen to you.

Finally, there are resources in your area. Talk to your senior mentor or regional director, they may be able to provide some help. If you need to, go to your principal and express your concerns, the school administration may be able to help get your mentor base on track.