Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by highlander

I very much doubt that 99% number. I know a lot of athletes, and while I don't know 1678 personally (but I don't doubt their dedication considering their successes), there is no way they can compete against peak-level high school athletes who work 3-5 hours (or more) on average every single day year-round to maintain their skill level and competitiveness. Don't shortchange a dedicated athlete.

If you are comparing the average FRC team to the average sports team, the comparison becomes even more one sided since almost every high school sports team practices at least somewhat year round for quite a few hours per week. In comparison, while many FRC teams do off-season work, their time commitment again pales in comparison to sports.

However, having said that, it seems to me that during the build season, time commitment can be roughly equivalent, if not a more to high school FRC teams over high school sports teams.

I very much understand that some athletes are incredibly hard-working. I was involved in Varsity Wrestling for all of high school, and I experienced quite a bit of success, and so did my robotics team. My wrestling team was consistently top 5 in the state, and my robotics team won a number of regional events.
During build season I would put in more time into robotics than I did wrestling, but during the off-season for robotics, I put more time into wrestling.
Having experienced relatively high levels of commitment in both, I don't doubt that I put in more work into either one than most athletes put into their sport.

I wasn't comparing the top 1% of both, which I find comparable, I was comparing the top 1% of robotics teams with the 99% of sports teams- where the robotics team puts in significantly more work.