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Re: Becoming Competitive
Before you start down the path of making your team better, you have to ask yourself why. If you are doing it because you want to have more fun while you are a student the job isn't as complicated as if you were wanting to build the team for lasting success. As a mentor I clearly prefer the latter, but it can be a lot of work.
If you are only worried about the short-term, you need to learn how to inspire and delegate. No man (or woman) is an island, building a competitive robot can keep dozens of people occupied for the entire build season. You should look for someone to take on a project manager role. This person's job it is to maintain the overall vision, and ensure that anyone who wants to work has work to do.
If you want to build the team for the long term, you need to work on the above, but you should also prioritize recruiting adults to the team. Mentors are the long term memory of an FRC team, and critical to making sure that success is repeatable. In your situation a mentor who has had previous experience with a successful team is worth their weight in gold; they will actually understand how to work some of the changes that you need to make to become a great team. If you have trouble finding adults, the first place to go is parents. They are already involved and are likely to know someone with the urge to play with robots. The biggest drawback is that you may find yourself needing to train them. When you have exhausted parents work on making friends in the first community; experienced mentors do move around, either for work or other just a change in scenery. Knowing FRC people in the area gives you a better shot at picking up a mentor like that.
Realize that regardless of what you are trying to do, you are probably going to run into resistance. Change is scary for people. As a student your best bet is to figure out how to get as many people as possible on your side, and slowly work towards your goals. Don't try to quash opposition, it will only wear you out and make people bitter. Personally I'm still trying to figure out a way past that.
Improving a team is long work. I rejoined 1296 as a mentor in 2012 (I was a student in 2004). Over that time we went from being a team that was happy to have a working robot, to one that always plays in elims, usually as a picking team. It is a process that takes time and people. Good luck. Working on this will give you a ton of skills that are useful after you graduate.
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