[Pat Roche]

I see things from both points of view that Andy started this thread from. When I first started doing FIRST I was on a small grass roots team. The team I was on has been struggling to find a company to give them a major sponsorship to help fund the team. The team remained competitive regardless of the lack of technical support they recieved from professionals. The team functioned with a teacher, a professional welder and the students. As the team grew in the next few years they were able to expand to recieve help from some of the parents who were engineers. The designs were still made by the students; they were simply assisted by the adults.The inspiration in all this comes from the guidance that was given to the students. The inspiration allowed for cleaner and better built machines.
The team still does not have an corporate sponsor with engineers but the students learn enough about theyre machine and with some guidance from the adults the still functions at a competitive level and the students learn alot about engineering, science and awhole lot more.

Moral of the story: A team does not need to have engineers to compete competitively but proper guidance from engineers is always a welcome contribution to a team.


-Pat