Practice bot morality

[2544HCRC]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

Edit: I forgot to cite my source, Jim Zondag's wonderful championship history white paper that he has published the last 2 years.

Is there a link to this white paper? I would love to read it.

I would like to give 2 examples of the problem as I see it. The first is from a local wrestling club. They started as a way to expose young kids to wrestling and as a way of promoting the sport. They were very successful for awhile. They were recruiting 4 and 5 year olds into the wresting club and it was a fun thing for kids to do on a Saturday. Instead of being a fun activity for the kids, it became all consuming. If you wanted in you had to submit to all kinds of fundraising activities and travel as a parent. Kids all of the sudden "needed" warm up suits, etc. The team "needed" to travel hundreds of miles for competitions etc. 9 and 10 year olds were pretty much excluded by default because if the difficulty breaking into the sport. The casual crowd fell and left behind the fanatics.

example 2 are the local volunteer fire departments. They have the same problem. The training that is required, combined with the fundraising has left most of the departments with fewer and fewer members. There are very few people that want that kind of commitment.

I see the same sort of thing happening in FRC. Our kids aren't that into robots or robotics. The dozen or so kids that are part of the team will commit (kind of) to a 6 week build season and do a little fundraising, but overall it's a side thing. For most, everything else comes first. I've had kids miss practice because of the swim team, tennis, the school play, bowling, and even because they had an opportunity to go to a friends party or just because they wanted to sleep in and take it easy on a Saturday. I end up (thank god) with 1 or 2 kids that are into it and commit more time than they should. I have no help outside of a couple of parents. The local engineers have been burnt out by the other local teams (both in the double or tripple digit range). They aren't interested in commiting to being away from their family multiple nights a week and the weekend. FRC is becoming more and more competative. Practice bots, multiple regionals, etc, etc, are all leaving the casual teams further and further behind. I'm sure in some minds that's a good thing but if the goal is to expose kids to STEM in an engaging way I see it as very limiting.