Quote:
Originally Posted by bcos
So this year is my teams' rookie year, and we are the only rookie team participating in our regional, guaranteeing that we will receive the Rookie All Star award.
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Even though you're the only rookie team, I suggest that you still hand out copies of the essay, talk to judges, and act with good teamwork and sportsmanship at the regional. I think that the judges don't actually
have to give the award at the regional; besides, it's good to start your team with a good reputation at your first regional. Show the judges that you really do deserve the equivalent of the Chairman's Award.
Quote:
Originally Posted by triggerhappy336
The mentors and (adult) team heads are really not behind this at all. It's extreamly frustrating. All they say is that it's great we are aiming high, but then go off in the corner and discuss amoung themselves how "unrealistic" it is for us to want to do this. ugh....
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I want to share my team's experience, because your mentors might not be that unreasonable:
We won the Rookie All-Star Award at the Philadelphia Regional last year. Philly is on the last week of regionals, with less than two weeks between the Saturday we won the award and the Wednesday we'd have to leave for Atlanta. In order to go to Championship, we would have had to find the money for registration, get the thing approved by the school (overnight trips normally have to be approved by the school board one month in advance, and we'd have to convince them to make an exception), plan how we would travel, contact parents to ask them to pay for hotel and food with short notice. Since that was our first year, the school and our mentors simply weren't prepared to organize this.
Even if we had more notice, and
even if we had the $5,000 already sitting in our account, the trip would have been a "logistical nightmare" to organize. Only one or two mentors would have been able to go. Those mentors (teachers) would have had to take even more time away from school. The robot needed a great deal of repair in order to safely run at competition. Most of the seniors on the team, who were pretty important for fixing the robot, wouldn't be able to go. At most, we could only have the drive team and a couple more students go on the trip. It just wasn't going to benefit the team to go on the trip. Only a few students would benefit from the experience of going to Championship, and the rest would miss it. We would barely have enough students to run the team at the competition. The team members wanted to go, but the mentors knew that they just couldn't do it for that year.
The next year, the mentors met a number of times to talk about the possibility, and eventually decided to register for the Championship, since we had qualified the year before but skipped it.
So we're still going to get what we wanted. Even if we don't win anything at the regional, we're planning to go to Championship this year. Some students who weren't on the team last year will also be able to go--if we had gone last year, they wouldn't be able to go this year.
Just keep in mind that going to Championship, missing school for a second competition, and everything else, gives the mentors much more to worry about than just raising money.