[Collin Fultz]

Cyber Blue lost a very strong group of seniors last year and will lose another strong group this year. It would have been very easy for us to say that we needed to focus on a simple robot that our young students could build.

What did we do? We decided it was time to try building one of those "crab" drives everybody talks about. We went with two sophomore drivers who became build team leaders by their work during the fall and build season. We have a freshman and a junior-first-year student also on our mechanical pit crew. Our human player is a first year member. We have very good upperclassmen leadership on our controls team, but they focus most of their fall projects on training new members.

Don't let their age fool you. Give the younger students the opportunity to step up. These young students have seen the dedication the upperclassmen put in and the responsibility and reward that comes from it. In more cases than not, at least in my experience, they are ready and eager to take the step.