Hey 1922!
During the off-season, we go to multiple off-season competitions. We hope you had fun at Mayhem in Merrimack
but also check out River Rage in Manchester (they switch off between the multiple Manchester, NH high schools). It's the oldest off-season held around early November and lots of teams go. Over the summer, specifically, we do a lot of volunteer work at community events but by no means do we completely fill our students' schedules... after all it is summer vacation! We have some team bonding activities (today we're all going to see Toy Story 3!) mostly over the summer. Then, when the school year starts back up again, we have 'Robot U' which is teaching the new members (and veterans who have been working on certain types of tasks who want to learn the other ones) about the basics in things like mechanical, electrical, software, business, and strategy. We found this year that what worked for us is not having the rookies come to all of our weekly meetings before kickoff, but rather have them come every other week and make sure those meetings contain something fun to keep them both involved and interested. When not during the 'peak FIRST season', for us it's really just a mixture of team bonding, community events, off-season competitions, learning with each other, and of course fundraising! If you can find the mixture/schedule of those things that works for your team then you're golden
.
WE LOVE YOU OZ-RAM!
Thanks,
Gen