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My plan to inspire students involves having a team that tries it's hardest to win. Work as hard as you can to be competitive....
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I agree with this, for the students. The game is there to be played, and played competitively - for the students
but not for the mentors. The mentors must have their heads in a different place.
Lets take a quiz:
1. When the mentors get together what do they talk about? The robot or the students? Do you discuss whether the robot design is everything you want it to be, how its progressing.... or do you discuss how well each student on the team is interacting, engaging, getting exposed to new aspects of engineering? Do you talk about ways the team can build better robots, or do you talk about ways to split up the team to reach more students, or start new teams at new schools?
2. When you assign students to subteams, do you put them where they already have the most experience and can make the most contribution, or do you put them on a subteam they have not been on before, knowing they will fumble for a while but will learn new things in the process?
3. When you have extra funds, do you buy new equipment that will make the team more competitive (and thereby more inspirational) or do you open the team to more students, plan to attend more regionals so the team has more appeal to new students.
4. When you are making robot design tradeoff decisions, do you choose complex designs that are more competitive, but that will require engineers and machinists to design and fabricate, or do you choose less demanding designs that the students can grasp, design and fabricate on their own?
5. When you have free time to talk with students, at regionals for example, one on one, what do you talk about? the robot? the contest? or the student, their experience with the program, their plans for the future?
Each persons answers to these questions will tell you where their head is (and you cant have your head in two places at the same time - if your answer is 'both', then which do you do first?).
The game is there, and its there to be played. For students the game itself is a big part of the appeal of FIRST. Ask a student what they did in FIRST and they will start talking about the robot and the game.
Ask a mentor what they did in FIRST, the robot should only be a footnote.