[mechanicalbrain]

you know their are some interesting ideas in this thread but i got to disagree with a couple of parts. our team is losing almost every aspect of leadership this year to kids going to college, and yet i think well be stronger next year. Not because they are bad leaders but because of the determination of the new people and what our leaders passed on. and while strong sponsorship is NICE we do really well and we don't normally have any money until after we build our robot (god i hope our sponsors don't read this but if they did they would know that what I'm really trying to say is we love them). In fact while there are some real flashy bots i think the judges also look at what the team has actually worked with. i saw some newbie teams with some kick *rear* bots. and as to the mentors we have found sometimes having lots of mentors or experienced ones can be a bad thing (they tend to turn down kids ideas on the basis of their knowledge and forget that teams should really be an expression of the students creativity not the mentors). I'm personally doing allot of our electrical experimenting for next year on my personal time with my own money ouch. overall i think FIRST still holds true to much of its principles (even if its scoring system doesn't). next championship take a look around you see kids sharing (or sneakily trying to discover) new ideas. you don't even need to look there look right here. the idea behind FIRST is not to win or even build cool bots the point is to give an environment where kids can learn and express themselves in ways not normally possible to them (ohh yeah and the pizza). every team has the chance too excel even if they don't have access to a water jet or obscene amounts of cash. they idea is that people have the chance to grow each year. if your leaders are truly teaching anything too the people they leave behind then you should be fine. wow that was long i doubt anyone is even going to read this far so I'm going to end it by saying I'm superior too all you so bow before me and worship me (heh bet i get away with that too)