[Mike Soukup]

I think the biggest reason your team is convinced they don't need any mentors is because the students are believe that they already know everything and don't need help. It's a common feeling for high schoolers. They're stubborn & rebellious. They're old enough to think for themselves and they want to prove it to the world.

They need to understand that their experience can be greatly improved by having a knowledgeable mentor on the team. The mentor will help keep them on task & make sure the project gets done, will point out obvious problems or mistakes that would otherwise delay or destroy the project, will give real world examples of what works or why a certain concept is important, will force the students to design complete solutions before building instead of the typical student method of a half-baked solution with layers of bandaids on top, will make students think about engineering instead of simply thinking about fabrication. Hopefully that's a good list of what mentors bring to the team.

If that's not enough, ask them how far they'd get in baseball if they didn't have coaches to teach them how to properly throw the ball or swing the bat. Or how much math they'd know if they didn't have someone to walk them through difficult exercises. They may get a basic understanding of baseball or math, but they gain more knowledge & skills when they have proper coaches & teachers. The same is true with designing, engineering, and building robots.