Are all girl FIRST team counterproductive to the philosophy of FIRST?

[sithmonkey13]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

An all boys catholic school simply isn't going to permit girls on the team.

False: 1178, D.u.R.T. is primarily from an all boys Catholic high school (De Smet Jesuit High School) but we allow girls in from the other high schools that do not have teams but want to participate. Are there less girls than guys? Yes (3 girls this year on a ~30 member team).

From personal experience, I believe that gender separate teams can actually convince more people to join. (One girl who went to a meeting in the pre-season to see what our team was like hid herself for 15 minutes waiting for the rest of the girls to arrive because she was scared of all the guys. After that meeting she never returned (We were told this one reason, but there were also other reasons that we were told were there, just not what they were.) If she found an all girls team and therefore learned all about FIRST, that is beneficial to the philosophy of FIRST, not detrimental.)

Just my thoughts on a complex issue.