[Jstack14]

What matters the most is the resources and the goals of the team. The team I am on is student lead and student run. We pride ourselves on having us students work on all aspects of our team. We strive to live up to all of FIRST ideals and go for all the awards from website to spirit to animation and chairmen’s. Our mentors help guide us in the right direction but ultimately it is the student’s choice as to what we do each year for the robot and other elements of our team. Since we don’t only focus on the robot, and don’t have the resources other teams have, our robot is good but not outstanding every year. Some years we do really well and some we struggle. In our fifth year we were seeded 9th going into the eliminations and unfortunately lost our first two matches. This is not because of lack of experience, because as many people stated 5 years is plenty, rather it is because of the way we run our team. I personally like the way we run our team because we learn the most by making mistakes and getting guidance from mentors but making educated decisions ourselves. With this approach we won’t have a powerhouse team every year but once in a while we may come up with an incredible robot. So long story short, age is a small factor, but how your team operates and the resources available matter much more.