Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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I agree with almost everything, except for student involvement, slightly. But that belongs in a "Student-built Vs Mentor-built" thread.
Let's just say that this is about teaching the students.
Our team has been around for exactly 8 years now. FIRST's website states that we went to ATL in 2002 and 2004, though nobody on the current team went. Whether we paid our way or won a regional, no one knows. What I do know is our team has suffered organizational and monetary problems since I've been on the team, until this year. 8 years is definitely past the 4-5 year estimate in this thread.
But beyond our lack of quality robot performance, we have bright young minds who are willing to learn about the process of running a successful team, including building a cool robot. Parents, teachers, and open-house guests are amazed at our "crappy" robots, not because of their on-field performance. It's because students had a leading role in designing and building that machine. And as of this year, we have the growing support of our Board of Education, school staff, and community. Along with that, we now have more funding. Not much, but enough to attend off-season events, buy some new toys (like a dedicated programming laptop and omni-wheels), and much more.
Getting somewhat back on-topic, though, I think we're missing another important aspect which can cause our age estimation to vary greatly: How long do you do what you do? Our team, at least for the 5 years that I've been involved, have
never met past the last week of our regional, and our meetings start roughly two months before kick-off. That's including recruitment, setting up our shop, finalizing sponsors, but more importantly, freshmen training. This year, we had about 6 freshmen students, and they appeared to be more useless than a left-handed screwdriver for the first few weeks. We had to teach safety, tool/machine training, get them somewhat acquainted with the rules/limitations of FIRST. The point I'm trying to make, is that a year-round team that is going into their third year will
probably perform much better than a 5+ year team that barely meets before and after each season.
tldr: Age never matters, at least when it pertains to FRC
teams.