[Rick TYler]

I made the mistake of taking my FTC teams to the Seattle FRC regional. They're a successful FTC team (especially since only one of my 20+ teammates are not rookies), and won an Inspire Award this year plus other recognition. If not for tragically forgetting to turn their robot on in the last semifinal match, all three of our FTC teams would very possibly have been in the Washington FTC finals (it was a great, although sad, learning experience).

Now they want to do FRC next year. I know the price that has to be paid for FRC -- I did it for two years. Half our FTC team is coming back next year, and I expect that they will be a force to be reckoned with in any FTC event we attend, while they would be an inexperienced, totally green rookie FRC team with limited money, shop resources, mentors, and robot programming experience. As the lead mentor I am currently torn between doing what they want to do (FRC and FTC), and what I'm sure they would be successful at (FTC only). I also know where the responsibility would fall to get the FRC program started. That would be -- me.

Our FRC life is complicated because Exothermic Robotics was started as a club for high school kids to join who attend high schools without robotics programs or are home-schooled. We draw most of our team members from three schools that have no shop facilities of any kind, and have no special interest in having big robots built on site. They are very friendly to us, but we don't ask for much except some space to store our parts, and the use of a classroom after hours. We are friends of the schools, but we aren't part of the schools. So, we would have no build site on campus for an FRC robot, no machine tools, and no industrial arts teachers to help.

Any thoughts from other experienced FTCers on this question? Anyone else had to make this decision?