Tips for Rookies at Championships

[lwhipker]

We found in Week 6 that we're headed to St. Louis as an All-Star Rookie award winner in NC -- we're all very excited!

However, with a 100% rookie team, it feels overwhelming with needing more funds to get to St. Louis than we had available for our entire build season, figuring out travel arrangements (which we were lucky enough to have not had to do as our Regional was local), traveling together as a team (which we hadn't needed to do before), thinking about affordable food options for team/mentors/families, coordinating 10 families in terms of driving 15+ hours/flying in/leaving, etc.

Many of the students and mentors are reading CD daily but it's hard to get some of the logistics down until we've gone once.

So, we're looking for some tips would be great for Championships. Specific random questions we're currently trying to figure out are:

1. Do we need to bring paperwork again? (Team Roster, BOM)

2. Compared to Regionals, it looks as though we're going to be spread very thin with our already fairly small team. We'll have only 10 students there. What are the major "extra's" in terms of people needs or things we shouldn't miss? (conferences, FTC/FLL, talking with other teams, mentor breakfast, NEMO get together, more people scouting/fewer people scouting?)

3. By staying near the airport, what are some tips for these very early morning and very late night logistics of moving team members/mentors/family members back and forth? We'll have some minivans but also younger siblings and family members who don't need to be there the same time.

4. Other than planning logistics around Pit opening/closing times, what other activities do we need to consider outside of those hours? (especially later)

5. How are teams planning to handle the 5 people limit in the pit on Wed pm? Our NEMO who can set up and register the team can be there at 5:00 but we won't have a technical mentor until 7:00. Looks like all 5 people have to go in at once with one load each. We do have some modifications that need to be made on the robot and would like to knock those out Wed. pm.

6. Inexpensive food options and tips for the team/mentors?

Any other things we don't know we don't know?