[av11d]

Thanks for the replies. I just wanted to make a few more comments

- Team 75 does have a rich history. The last few years have been very inconsistent considering we've had 3 new teacher-advisors in 3 years. Our lead sponsor, J&J, has also been trying to find the right balance of team leadership/sponsorship over the past few years; we've rotated between a few J&J sponsor leaders. We also (do to terrible recruiting a few years back) have zero 4th year members. I'm trying to develop a sustainable group of leaders (parents, J&J leaders, and teachers) so that we can build off each previous year.

- We have maintained all of our 1999 -> 2004 robots in pretty good condition. We drive them around; that usually does help motivate our team.

- As for the off-season events, that is something I'm DEFINITELY making a priority. Due to the inconsistency mentioned above, our off-season events usually consist of presentations that the students run purely out of dedication. We will be attending an off-season competition next year.

- We created a Team Spirit sub-team at the end of last year. Team Spirit is something I felt Team 75 had always lacked in previous years. This year we are FINALLY naming our robot. We have some really cool stuff planned for the competitions. Think Indiana Jones.

I may have over-exaggerated my original post. Our team is not experiencing any sort of crisis; I'm just trying to get some ideas for how to teach FIRST-newbies what FIRST is. I do recognize that most teams struggle with this, too.

Thanks so much!

--Andrew Duch