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Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
Team 343 is sponsored and housed by the school district and while that has it's frustrations, mostly snow days where we can't go work and the inability to use 14 passenger vans, we are very appreciative of their support. They do provide us with some monetary sponsorship, but the biggest aspect of their support that I think really helps us be as successful as we are is the facility we get to use free of charge. We are housed in the career center (vocational school) and as a result we have a full machine shop right down the hall, a wood shop that often builds field elements for us, and a welding shop that we can use. Behind the career center there is also a warehouse that we are given a small portion of, enough for a half field and storage space for all our old bots. While I realize that many school sponsored teams are not as fortunate as we are I think that it is definitely a huge advantage to have a work space that is free.
Also from a recruiting standpoint we get the opportunity to drive robots around at open house nights and people can come into "robot central" and see what we do.
As far as membership limits, we are fortunate that our school district does not limit us at all, any FRC eligible student is welcome, including private school students and home-schoolers as we are an after school program and function, as far as the paper side of things, like a band or other sports team.
Also, because we are school sponsored, all our trips are recorded as "educational field trips" and thus they are not counted against us.
In short, there are pros and cons to both, but, at least for our team, I think we would have a much harder time if not for their enthusiastic support.
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I didn't break it... this time.
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