Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens, have always had a certification process and hours requirement in order to qualify for the competition team.
In the fall students earn certifications in various areas i.e. Fabrication, Design, Software, Electronics, Marketing, etc. The certifications come in levels with Level I being fairly easy to earn in a week or so after school whereas Level IIs and IIIs might require a month or so. Anyone is welcome to join in the fall.
To be on the competition team starting January 1st, students need to have logged at least 50 hours over the course of the fall and have earned at least a level II certification in at least one discipline. We do all this because our team's robot is entirely student designed and built which means we need the skill base to pull it off.
Usually we have around 25-30 students (out of a high school of 285) in the fall. Normally all but a couple qualify for the competition team because the expectations are known to all up front.
Once the competition season starts, students must log at least 50 additional hours over the course of the 6 week build season. Many log many times that amount, of course. Putting more effort into the build season also puts students in line to be a department manager in future years. We're looking at a higher hour requirement in order to attend the Championships should we qualify as we have the last four years.
Our certification requirements get tweaked each year but last year's can be found at
http://www.team1540.org/departments . You'll notice reference to the BunnyBot competition throughout. That's a FRC-like competition we invent each year for local teams that we all use as a warm-up exercise for the build season. Details on last year's competition is at
http://www.oregonfirst.org/regional-...bot-scrimmage/