These threads always surface at this time of year, as dedicated students see the types of robots and teams they are up against. This discussion has been great in this thread, and I would like to add some brief additions.
1. Many people assume that "great looking 'bots" which perform great are all done by adults. While this does happen in FIRST at times, it is much rarer than you think. Many people have accused our team of doing this over the years, as
this thread did. While it is true that we have very involved adults, we also have students design, build, debug, and fix the 'bot right along side of these professionals.
2. There are many college students who are acting as mentors who have had this same opinion of "it's not fair when adults design/build/etc.!!!" It takes them about a year or two of experiencing the uniqueness of FIRST before they realize the benefit of the adult mentors in this program.
Andy B.