[Mr V]

There have been some good ideas so far.

The most important thing in my opinion is to connect with a veteran team to act as your mentor team. I've previously suggested for you to get in contact with your FIRST Senior Mentor and have them connect you with a team. FSMs know the teams in your area and who will be a good mentor team (and hopefully one that will be at the same event). Embrace the FIRST culture of Coopertition, do not fight it. Yes, getting buy-in from the students can be a challenge.

A mentor team will let you borrow/give you needed parts. They will let you use tools you don't have yet, manufacture parts at their facility and/or manufacture parts for you. They will also review your designs for potential problems, suggest tweaks to make it stronger/better performing ect. When you get to the event and something breaks it is nice to have that familiar helpful team to get you through it. Yes lots of teams at the event will be willing to help but one with prior knowledge of your team, your resources and your robot is nice.

Some things that haven't been mentioned that I share with rookie teams.

The most important by far It is far better to do one or a few things well than doing everything poorly or not quite at all. Your chances of getting picked for finals is greater if you can consistently do that one or few tasks and can be counted on to consistently score ~X points rather than doing good a couple of matches but also doing nothing or next to nothing other matches.

Create a pre match check list and ensure it is done every time. Important check list items.

Fresh battery
Reset robot
If you have pneumatics make sure the valve is closed, system charged.
If you have to position the robot in a particular manner ensure it is before you put it on the field.
General inspection.
Damaged items
Look for loose nuts and bolts.
Things that were knocked out of place ect.

Capitalize on the event and post event enthusiasm. Get parents to the event so they get enthused too. As a rookie team in TX I'm betting you got started in part by a Texas Workforce Commission and/or other rookie grants that will drop in value and eventually go away. After the event is a great time to start fund raising for next season and engage those parents who said "this is so cool I wish I could help but I'm not an engineer" once they have seen the spectacle that is an FRC event.

Set a realistic definition of success for a first year team. Winning it all is unlikely so if that is your only definition of success then your students are likely to be discouraged. Putting a robot on the field that contributes every match is a realistic goal for a rookie team.

For most teams the 2nd year is the hardest.

In your first year you are blessed with the fact that you don't know what you don't know. So you keep on plodding along and your expectations of what your robot can do are low. Once you've been to an event and have seen all of the great robots and all they can do the natural desire is to shoot for the moon. The problem is those top robots you see are usually created by teams that have great institutional knowledge built up over 3, 5 or more years. (this is why you want that veteran mentor team with that knowledge) So while you should certainly try for a more complex robot your second year you need to keep in mind the "do one thing well" motto.

The other problem that many second year teams face is rapid growth in team size. When the number of students increases significantly it can be hard to keep everyone engaged, and ensure that everyone is learning something, having fun and their knowledge is growing. This is the point I'm really struggling with on my second year team. Our first year we had 13 students and we now have 37. Note, I'm struggling with this one and while this is the 2nd year for my current team it is my 8th season in FRC and I'm a FSM so I knew it was coming.