[Leeebowitz]

Coming from a team that is in its 6th year and has yet to be wildly successful, my personal feeling is that age barely matters. Of course, as a rookie team, most don't have a bot that rivals the amazing teams in FIRST; but as was mentioned, there are some teams that haven't lost a regional ever, from the onset of their rookie season.

In my own experience, a lot of what matters is not team age, but more of the things that make or break a FIRST team, in my humble opinion: Resources, policy, and student involvement.

By resources I mean money, machining tools/companies to make parts, mentors, engineers, etc. Some teams have a CNC laser cutter and a team of professionally trained machinists ready to make every part on the robot as soon as a student draws it up. Some have a drill press and some nuts and bolts. Obviously, the team with the laser cutter is going to be able to do a whole lot more than the drill press team. The laser cutter team has less to worry about in terms of "how are we actually going to make this" and more to worry about "is this the best solution for this year's game."

By policy, I mean what the students do and what their engineers and other helpers do. I have seen teams where the students take absolutely no part in the building of their robot, and I have seen teams where the team is student work from start to finish. A team of professional engineers and mentors doing all of the work is obviously going to trump the best of what a team of high school students can do.

By student involvement, I mean how motivated the students are about FIRST and spreading the message of FIRST, showing team spirit, and wanting to participate in the program. A team with 50 students who never show up and hope that somebody else is doing the hard work is never going to come close to the team with 15 students who work hard and do all they can to make their team a successful team.

I am not mentioning team names because I am not accusing anybody of things like having adults do all of the work or having unmotivated students or whatever else. It's just that these are the things that I see teams doing differently that make an impact on how their team and their robot turns out. Regardless of age, some teams have it all and some teams just never quite make it.