[FRC Blog] Helping Rookie Teams

[Brandon Ha]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Eric is right. Committed parents will step into whatever role is necessary to sustain a team -- I know several who have remained committed long after their kids graduated. Some become mentors, some become key volunteers, some sustain booster organizations. Generally, I think these key parents become committed because they get the FIRST vision.

I think the hardest thing about parents is the post graduation years and why some rookies continue for only one year after there initial year. Parents obviously want to watch their child succeed and if it takes a year of sucking it up they can do it, for them its worth it to see their "adults" graduate happy. But after they graduate, after they have sucked it up they leave. What else do they have to stay for. On my team, we had two business mentors leave at the same time. For the offseason, we did not know how to contact our sponsors, they even thought they were talking to one of the mentors.

I guess what I am trying to say is, its the parents who are the most influential in keeping a school's FRC Team successfully running. They can get the school boards to allow and push the program through. They are the ones who are care free about the success of the team, only driven on the success of the kids because their kids were there.