[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by Eric Finn

Alright, perhaps this could use some clarification.
To whoever said something about quantity over quality - Dean Kamen, Walt, and the guy from the NHHTC (but especially Dean Kamen) talked about how necessary mentors were. Dean Kamen talked for quite a while (surprise, surprise!) about how necessary good mentors were to FRC, even saying something along the lines of having a FRC team at a school without good mentors was essentially pointless.

The person who posed the quality v. quantity question is one of FRC's superior young mentors and a WFFA winner. JVN has contributed designs in collaboration with other FIRST mentors that have been part of the FRC kit of parts and his drive train calculator posted right here on CD-Media has been used successfully by countless teams. He was a student on a team in HS and has mentored both a college based and a sponsored based team.

As far as the pointless nature of an FRC team without "good" mentors I would challenge you to define "good". I believe this is akin to the push Dave Lavery made at kickoff about how having real engineers and/or actual engineering support on a team is critical and a part of the program. That is not the same thing as trying to define "good" mentors.