[Garret]

My team is literally student led in every way we have 1 mentor who helps with the mechanics, a team member who graduated but helps with programming, a teacher advisor who only attends tournaments, and a few other mentors who show up on weekends sometimes.

The reason for our lack of mentors is that, after a management change at the company my dad (our coach and primary mentor) works for he has been unable to commit to anywhere near as much time as before. to compound this problem, we already had our long time mentor from JPL go to work for a different company and has been only able to attend practices on the weekends.

If my school(s) put limits on the time I could put in during the season I really think that it would not do me (~4.5 GPA) or the team any good. My brother and I put in countless hours during the season. On our team the more experience team members (like myself and other group leaders) end up assuming a mentor-like role at practices. As a result our experienced members will end up putting in 3-4 hr. a night during the school week at build sessions and additional 8-10 hr. a day on weekends. I also have to handle all of the CAD for my team and end up putting in anywhere from 40-100 hrs. in on my own time to CAD up the robot. My brother the team president has to plan out the meetings and any other team event on top of handling sponsors and the registration stuff. In the last week those student leaders will end up putting in about 150 hrs. as we finalize the robot.

If a time limit were imposed on my team it would likely decapitate the leadership and would either cause the team to collapse (which we are already in danger of) or we would have to just ignore the restriction (which wouldn't be that hard for us considering I live at our build site, my house). I don't know how many other teams have a situation similar to ours but if it were to happen to my team the likely result would be no team.

my estimates for the hours put in on our team are:
Me ---- 500+ hr. (I only have school 3 hours a day for most of the season.)
my brother, and VP ---- 400 hr. each
Other team leaders (8 members) ---- 250+ hr.
Regular team members (10 members) ---- 100+ hr.
Club members (15 members) ---- 40 hr.
A large number of the hours for our team members come in the last 4-5 days of the build when we usually have a 4 day weekend and meetings run 15-20 hr. a day for some members.

I think a wiser and more effective solution would be to maintain a minimum GPA like you would on a sports team. That way the team leaders, who I can say that on my team all have high grades, can still lead the team.