[tribotec_ca88]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

i don;t personally like the idea of turning away students who want to be involved. i honestly think that most teams get weeded out naturally as the season progresses, ie.. people get involved with other stuff and stop showing up. you can also keep a log of when people work to determine who travels. i also think that if you have hundreds of applicants that maybe you school should start 2 teams, with that much interest the school board and local area should be fine with major support, remember FIRST is for everyone not just the 30 that are most qualified at the beginning of the season. This is true because FIRST is about expanding your horizons and learning, i would hate to think that the next dean Kamen is at your high school and he/she would never realize their potential because someone decided that they wern't the "FIRST material" just my .02

I totally agree. But at our school it's just no use. We don't have organized sports teams/squads like most schools do so our FIRST team does receive a lot of attention, which is why we have hundreds of applicants. But's there's no way to handle a 100-person team. It really is unfair turning down people that are interested, but as we have no funds to start 2 or more teams at our school, we have no other option. However, we have a robotics study group and at the end of the year we're having a local robotics competition...which is great because it does allow students to get involved, although it's not directly related to FRC. Unfortunately, selecting the actual FIRST team depends on an elimination process...