Application To Join A Team

[Gray Adams]

Different teams have different requirements and capabilities. Our team has 2 class periods, one of which you must be enrolled in if you want to be a member of the team. This caps us at around 55, even thought we get 80 or so applicants each year. It's not realistic to make FIRST teams different from all other organizations, where anyone can do whatever they want and still be a part of it. If a team decides that students who can't maintain grades while on the team can't participate, that's their prerogative. Sports teams do that all the time, in the interest of the student's academic career, not out of punishment.

Similarly, if you can't contribute enough time to be a valuable member of the team, is it really fair to expect leaders and mentors to spend their time training you, getting you involved, and then having you walk away? Of course this happens to some degree, its only natural for people in high school to not know exactly what they want to do, but maybe this team has found that they need to be a little stricter to be successful (I don't mean winning is the only way of being successful either).

There are things they do that I'm sure I'd disagree with, but if that's what keeps their team running, who are we to tell them that they need to accept more students, even if they can't?