Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?

[jprince58]

First off, I am assuming you are talking about Varsity sports in high-school.

In a lot of ways, this is comparing apples to oranges. They are different in many ways, and in my opinion, an FRC team has a lot more aspects to it that aren't comparable to sports, while most qualities in a sports team have comparable qualities to an FRC team. Though I can go on for hours about why I think an FRC team is the ultimate extra-curricular activity, that doesn't seem to be the discussion here. Instead, I am just going to describe the overlapping qualities, and how they compare.

Competitiveness
This one I think you have to give to sports team. In general, while most FRC teams are competitive, almost all sports teams are highly competitive. And the top competitive sports teams (like, top .1-1%) are imo much more competitive than there FRC counterparts. Some of this is due to culture, but the other part of this is that FRC does not encourage the barbaric competitiveness that is fostered in many sports programs. Many highly competitive sports programs are just at an unhealthy level of competition, and FIRST tries to not promote that.

Time Commitment
This one has so many caveats its hard to compare. I am going to break it up into the general team, like official meeting times, and then break it down further to the individual members.

On a general team basis, I think it can be pretty even across the board. My FRC team put in 13 hours a week at meetings, while my Cross Country team put in 12 hours a week at practice, making those pretty even. Generally though, while Sports teams as a whole only put in so many hours a week, the highest level FRC teams can put in a lot more hours a week. I know FRC teams, not just members, teams, that put in 40+ hours a week, which probably isn't touched by any high-school sports team in the country (probably a few exceptions, but not many). The middle-ground sports/FRc teams are pretty even, while FRc is top-heavy in time commitment.

As for individual members, there is a lot more discrepancy. For the middle-ground sports/FRC teams, the average Joe athlete probably puts in more hours than the average Joe FRC student. Again though, I think FRC is top-heavy here. The most committed members of FRC teams put in hours that could almost never be touched by even the most committed athletes (that actually, you know, go to school). And a lot of that just comes down to oppurtunity. Whereas an athlete really only has from 4-7 am and 3-11 pm on an average school day, and 4 am to 11pm on days off, an FRC member has a lot more hours to put in. For FRC, especially if you are on more of the "business" side of your team, you can basically work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if your body would let you. I know I personally spent more time on FRC between the hours of 11pm and 4 am my senior year than I spent practicing for cross country any single year. And FRC can occur year round if you are more of a chairmans team, while many sports are just one season. At the end of the day, the FRC individual commitment has the potential to be, and is, much more top-heavy than sports, while middle-ground favors athletics.

Though there are some other apt comparisons I could talk about, my post is officially to long, so I'll stop here.