as a first year team, just start simple. Easy, very basic comprehensive tutorials are found on the first base site (
http://firstbase.autodesk.com/)
After that, if you are looking to find a tutorial of a specific thing, google is great. If you google 3ds Max tutorials, you'll find a lot of stuff out there. Some of it cost money, but you'll defiantly be able to find a lot of good free sources.
Also, spread the idea that your team is using 3ds Max. There's a chance that someone else might know how to use the program, even if they are not interested in robotics. In my school, a person in my computer class who I expected to have no knowledge of 3ds, was actually very very experienced in it, using it to design Halo environments instead of animations.
There's a lot of stuff and a lot of people. I'm sure that if you start small and work up, you'll get quite far.