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Originally Posted by ToMMan b182
I hear about teams who only bring a few kids on Thursdays, or to nationals. This really bugs me. Everyone has a role on the team, no matter how trivial. Even if it is inputing data into a scouting database, they still can lend a hand and be part of the great thing that is called a FIRST competetion. I mean that is what its about, right? Isn't about learning teamwork, sportsmanship, and gracious professionalism... not just "who knows the most about building a robot"?
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Our team takes 3-4 adults and 10 students on Wensday night to the regionals we travel to (2ish hours away to both Annapolis and VCU). The rest of the team, 30 or so more students and chaparones, come down Friday morning and spend the one night. This is done for several reasons.
Not everyone can miss that much school and not suffer grade wise. We got some heat last year from teachers about students not doing homework and grades plumeting durring build season.
Parental help. As a school trip, we need to have x adults per x students. As a team rule, we pay for the adult chaparone hotel rooms.
Cost. It cost the students $50 for hotel to go to both regionals and the team payed the rest. To add another night to hotels for that many people would add $1000 per regional. This would have to come from somewhere.
As for nationals, we decided not to go this year because about half of the team would already be in Atlanta for a band trip and would be unable to participate with the FRC competition. When the team has gone to Nationals, the entire team flys down at the same time.
We also do have an hours system, where we log offical meeting hours and you have to attend 80% of them to go on any of the trips. As far as I am aware, no one that was attending meetings near the end fairled to go on a trip because of hours. There were some that were close, and were pushed along to the extra meetings that were added to the schedule near the end (but were not part of the 'offical hours' count)
Wetzel