[Winged Wonder]

to prevent that sort of problem, our team enforces specific requirements that need to be met in order for students to go to comepetitions. for each competition, there are a certain amount of robotics related hours, community service hours, and fund raisers each team member needs to have in order to go on a trip. ex: this year, in order to go to both regionals and the championship event, a student needs to have dedicated at least 90 hours to the robotics team itself (either helping design and assemble the robot, working on chairmans award or on the spirit comittee, or whatever), 10 community service hours elsewhere (its his/her choice), and needs to have participated in at least 7 fundraisers this year. sure it may seem a little harsh to impose restrictions on who can do what even though they are interested in FIRST, but it ensures that the people truly involved and dedicated are allowed to have fun, and gives the slackers something to work for. i'd suggest having some sort of system to get people really dedicated