Rookie Season 2014 - Lessons Learned

[Chief Hedgehog]

After 2 years competing in FRC I am left with a lot of "we should haves".

The number one thing I will put forth is get your funding in order. It seems that teams in my area that are attached to the schools that they represent do not go out and get more funding. Public Schools do not have the funding to put forward a top tier team every year (The Charter and Private schools 'get it' straight-away and go after private funding). Once a Public School adopts a program, pays for the registration, the coaching, etc - it is already $15,000 into the program. They see no incentive to put more into the team. GET CORPORATE SPONSORS!

The second item is to create a strong drive train. If you have a strong drive train heading into the season, you are miles ahead of most teams competing at your regional (unless you are in Michigan or the Toronto area). We were a step away from including a Butterfly drive for this year - but we missed the mark (because we were trying to do too much).

We did well over the last two years - with terrible drives. We are now in the midst of perfecting our "BeckerFly" drive as well as a tank drive using the 3Cim Ball Shifter. We will be completing these two over the next couple of weeks.

Which leads me to my final point - get your team active in the offseason.