[Ellery]

Another Aspect of this discussion would be that teams who travel to more Regionals have more practice and time to improve as well vs. those who just go to 1 or 2 events. Either way the Practice robot would be fine in my eye if you can make it happen with students involved in all aspects especially if you're only able to compete in a limited amount of competitions.

My team has never built a full practice robot in the 14 years we've been involved base on the fact that we tend to concentrate on the process not necessarily the competition. If you haven't noticed we have not won a single robot competition yet but we've always been very competitive. You just have to balance the focus so that your team has a competitive machine without sacrificing the interaction of the students.

IMHO having a practice robot or not doesn't matter, as someone else put it, that's reality! The student should understand how to use their resources efficiently. The message of FIRST has not changed in the 14 years. Just get back to the basics and not worry too much of all these details of who's better off or not. Just concentrate on your kids and let the destiny work its charm.

Ellery