[marccenter]

Team 4242,

Yes. Getting to the World Championships is expensive and that is one of the reasons, not the only one, why RoboRavens2 turned down their qualification to the World Championship.

As a corporate sponsored team our registration fee was covered after we qualified at the Michigan State Competition. However, there are a bunch of other issues you may have not considered even if the funds become available for your registration fee. Let me provides some additional issues that we discussed as a team.

1) Registration fee - $5000

2) Student fee - $500 ($250 AMTRak train transportation plus $250 for hotel lodging). We just returned from the Michigan State Championship in Grand Rapids, MI where the students paid out $200 and spent 2 full school days.

3) Student time commitment - 14 hour train ride on Tuesday from Detroit, MI through Chicago to St. Louis MO. Wed through Sat at St. Louis,MO. 16 hour return train ride arriving in Detroit at 1 a.m. Monday morning. Students most likely miss 5 full school days. Students return with significant homework load. We did not have any of our working parents on the team volunteer to drive to St. Louis. Round Trip flights from Detroit take 1 hour and cost nearly $500 saving time but more costly for everyone.

4) Mentor/chaperon commitment - Female chaperon required due to female team members. Always difficult finding this person. Adult needs to most likely take personal vacation time. Female chaperon at MSC was not parent of team member and took time at the Michigan State Championship was not available for Worlds. We did not have any moms volunteering for this role for St. Louis, MO.

5) Transportation of PIT tools - 550 miles from Detroit. Individual needs large vehicle (VAN) or truck and trailer to transport heavy materials. This individual will drive on Tuesday 500 miles and stay overnight close to St. Louis to arrive early to be reading to unload at PIT at 4:00 p.m.

Driver will need to drive 550 miles back to Detroit on Sunday and will be pretty tired on Monday perhaps taking another personal vacation day. Five personal vacation days take from their allotment provided by their employer. This could be a significant hardship to any one person's vacation schedule for the year. (Assume they have only three weeks... one third of their vacation time for the year gone for this event...no impact to students who have summer vacation every year).

6) Student team member requirements - we determined that we needed about 12 students ($500 per student scholarship) to do justice to the $6000 our sponsors were paying for us to attend. 1 driver, 1 operator, 1 human player, 1 safety captain, 2 pit crew members, 6 scouts. We were unable to get a commitment from 12 students after attending the Michigan State Championship last week with 13 students.

7) Mentors/Coaches/- Head coach, field coach, scout coach, pit coach. We had six mentor/coach/chaperons at MSC. We felt that the driver/head coach/ field coach could be one person (me). We still needed a separate scout coach to be with six students for three solid days. We wanted to make sure that the pit crew had an adult mentor. In additional to these three adult mentors we would need ta female chaperon (we do not have any female mentors who have filled the other roles).

8) Team pays for mentor/coaches/chaperon lodging fees from team funds.

9) Additional cost for robot items after participating in 44 matches (12+6, 12+ 2, 12) during FiM season.