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Originally Posted by TheFish
I'm not talking about recruiting so much... but more the fact that I can assume most teams have seniors leading (clearly with the most experience). So I'm wondering if there is a void whenever those seniors leave.
I'm assuming the most important solution is just training and education for the underclassmen right?
Do most teams spread out work evenly amongst all grade levels or let the leaders/seniors do most of the work?
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Last year we took 16 Students to Atlanta. 15 of them were Seniors, One of the was a Sophomore who's now our Captain and Driver. This distribution is true of our work as well. The robot was designed by a senior last year (me), the driver team was comprised entirely of Seniors, The Robot was built primarily by Seniors, and When things got really bad in the pits - seniors were there fixing it.
Some other members and I came back this year to help out with various things and to help fill the voids we left. It was clear this year that we weren't at our full capacity, and our overall inexperience as a team showed.
It's a strange situation though, and I don't know if there's a correct answer or a perfect solution to the problem. At one level, you have kids who've paid their dues for three years and now it's their time to shine, but on the other hand you have the future of your team to think about. I'd guess it's easier in some of the larger teams with more Adult help, I've noticed that they don't seem to have the same talent surges that teams with less adult help seem to have.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd put a larger emphasis on teaching underclassmen. We (The Class of 2009) had a tendency of getting things done without including younger students, and this was due to the way we went through both robotics and schooling together.