[Mr. Ackroyd]

Tryouts are very interesting. I've been slowly building an empire at my district (ha). We started with FLL in 2008 and FRC in 2009. We have built FLL up to seven teams through the years. This has been great but also difficult because of the ten limit involvement imposed by FIRST. We do have tryouts at the FLL level and have developed a rubric to complete this process. It's worked out well and some coaches at the FLL level will keep up to fifteen students (the extras are apprentices).

In 2012 I created an FTC team to bridge the gap between FLL and FRC. The previous coach for FRC said the learning curve between the two was to great and 9th graders coming into FRC often times caused more trouble and chaos. My FTC team is limited to 8th and 9th graders. Their season begins in September and ends in January. This works out very well as when their season ends as I have the 9th graders join FRC at that time. The learning curve has been greatly reduced and these students can now be apprentices on the sub teams they want to join.

I have no limitation for students on either the FTC or FRC team. FTC usually stays around 20 students and FRC is between 35-40.

I will say having all three levels of FIRST builds a great community. We just hosted the local FLL tournament and it was great. My FRC team lead the event as emcee's, DJ's, judges and referees. My FTC team lead the FLL teams from event to event and keep the teams on schedule.

FIRST is about bringing opportunities to all. Keeping it open to as many as possible is key. The ones that mill around and don't contribute will eventually leave. It's the ones that may have missed the cut that excel!!