I guess I really take our numbers and luck for granted (though, as manager...its sometimes not fun getting all those people to work). How big are your guys schools? We have 2600 people in ours, I don't know if that makes a difference or not. We're a public school, but supposidly a very competitive one with tons of "active" students.
We also draw people from all different crowds because our teacher is just awesome. I, for example, am not scientifically inclined but I was recruited for my management skills. Then there's the ex-football players who love all the manual labor. Not your average robotics people I guess some people would say. Recruiting also helps because we have tons of connections. There are two members of student government (me being one)...this helps us get a little money and ideas for fundraisers. We have newspaper people so we always get recognition in there. One team member is in print shop so he silkscreened all of our shirts. Then our head guy's mom is a teacher so he missed three weeks of school to build our robot but didn't get in trouble (well his grades did drop).
However...while our teacher is a really funny English guy (he even set up a monarchy in our robotics team
) he mostly delegates power so I empathize with having a teacher that doesn't do anything. I basically felt like the advisor filling out all the paper work, even ordering our hotel, airline tickets, and rental cars. Fortunately everything went well or else I would get lynched by the boys. Yeah...that wouldn't be good!