Is a FIRST Team equal to a traditional sports team?

[Ichlieberoboter]

Originally Posted by jprince58

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.

Yes. I am on chairmans and website and programming and it's legit non-stop. Like I do varsity tennis and take indoor lessons throughout the winter and spring two hours a day twice a week and over the summer I do a league that practices 4 hours a day twice a week and then in the fall we practice 3-5:30 every day after school and compete twice a week and I can still say without a doubt that I spend about 3 times as much time on FRC as I do on tennis. I work on the website a lot and plan drives and fundraisers and work on the app we made about FIRST robotics and keep track of the countries we reach and which ones are third world countries and watch YouTube videos on programming and a lot of other things about 4 hours a day, every day, no exaggeration. Off season. On season, I do it pretty much 24/7. Even during class I sit and make lists of countries and outreach and updates I could make, etc. And I'm not even one of the top teams like 1678 and 341 and 2826.

[waialua359]

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.

For our team, I believe its the equivalent if not more, vs our athletes in our State.
The difference though is what our society/culture deems as relevant/important.

Our football players/coaches/parents and other volunteers dont have to worry about funding their own facilities, pay for their own uniforms, mowing the grass, taking care of the bleachers, paying their coaches or paying for the buses to take them to games. Our robotics team has to do all of that in addition to teaching our students robotics-related skill sets. So I guess we spend more time doing Robotics but not as much time honing our skills.

[Chief Hedgehog]

I am not certain that you can concretely compare Robotics to all other sports. That being stated, how can one compare one sport against another?

I have coached soccer at the Varsity Level for 7 years; I have coached wrestling at multiple levels for over a decade; I have now coached FRC for 3 seasons.

In terms of comparing one sport against another - it is a ridiculous task. The objectives are not equal - so the argument is moot.

FRC is a sport. Why? Because we compete. The ultimate end result is a winner. If you do not win, you lose.

Cross-Country is a sport.
NASCAR is a sport.
Golf is a sport.

All of these are sports where you compete against another person or team - but ultimately you are competing against yourself - to produce your best result.

So yes, FIRST is a sport.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

FRC is a sport. Why? Because we compete. The ultimate end result is a winner.

So is FRC not a sport in 2017?

[Sperkowsky]

It depends on the sport

As a gymnast I practice 4 hours every day all year round. It's a lot more work then frc sorry but it is.

During build season I'm also at robotics every day for a few hours but it's no where near as hard then doing sport training for hours.

Let alone that I'm a high level but some of my elite friends practice 8-10 hours a day. No where near an frc team.


Frc is hard mentally but overall not as hard as a traditional sport

Sorry but it is

[asid61]

I should fine-tune my previous answer.
For the vast majority of those who participate in robotics, there is no comparison to those who play sports. Sports requires a much larger time committment than FRC for almost everybody in FRC.
But, if you are in the tiny margin of people that spend hours and hours working, then the time you spend is comparable to the tiny margin of sports; personally I spend anywhere between 6-8 hours of FRC stuff on weekdays, and more on weekends. Once it gets to the point where all free time is spent on something, it is no longer a question of who is spending more time, but rather a question of who has more time to spend.

[Mr. Lim]

Right now, people don't consider robotics to be a sport.

By people, I mean the general public.

There are some really forward-thinking states that have high-school athletic associations that actually do recognize robotics as a legitimate sport, and I think this is an amazing thing.

I think it is extremely important that we (the FIRST community) do our best to start convincing others to treat robotics more like a sport.

There are a lot of reasons which I highlight in this blog post:

Robotics: A Character-Building Sport for the Mind
http://www.crescentschool.org/learn-more/crescentvoices

[WillNess]

I think that if you're looking at spent time, FRC dominates sports. Or at least by my standpoint because I was required at every meeting. During the build season I was spending more time a week at robotics then I was at school. 35 hours a week at school, and at LEAST 37 hours, at the end of the build season it was approaching around 40-45. I think that the community of the kids is way different than an actual sports team. On sports teams I see more competitiveness within the team, and you'll never see gracious professionalism between different sports teams.

[cxcad]

This thread raises an interesting question for me: Is academics a sport? After all, most of us are competing for the highest rank, the most APs, the highest test scores, etc. And in some schools, students get letters for academic achievement.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by thatnerdjack

I should also probably mention that her main argument was that they don't have the same "atmosphere". Meaning that the people on her rugby team were closer than the people on my FRC team are.

this being the main point would make FRC and most sports very similar, in that some teams have disharmony, others are the party team, while others work perfectly together, with only minimal issues.

That being said FRC is not a sport. there is not enough physical exertion during the actual competition, and the majority of the team technically does not compete (but instead plays some sort of support role to the 4 that do). Most sports require a specific skillset to be successful on the team, but in FRC there are many different skills that are of use (I spend a comparatively small amount of time on the robot, but I help a lot with strategy development, chairmens and scouting). FRC is something wonderful in and of itself, but a sport it is not- I think it is better than a traditional sports team, but that might be a bit of a personal bias

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

So is FRC not a sport in 2017?

Yes.

[thyme]

I am a member of team 1678, and also a member of our high school's track team. I am also a black belt in martial arts. I work at a high level in all. On 1678, I am a travel team member. We choose travel team members based off of how much they put in to the team. In track, I am one of our league's leading high jumpers. (We are in a rather competitive league as well). In order to even be eligible for your black belt in my studio, you need to put in over 5 years of training.

I can honestly say that I put way more into robotics than sports. While arguing about martial arts being a traditional sport is something else, I also have my track experiences to fall back on.

People talk about the atmosphere not being the same, and I think that really depends on the sport. With track, we have a team of over 200 people. You really only get to know people in your event group, and even then what you are doing is individual. With robotics, I know pretty much all of our dedicated members, and we all work together as a team.

As for time commitments, it's hard to say. The robotics team only meets twice a week after school, and then on the weekends. However, we put in a lot of hours on those days. With track, I train every day after school, and only do things on the weekends if I qualified for an invitational meet. Things get even messier for the fact that I have to miss track for robotics, and robotics for track at different times during the overlapping seasons.

As to which one makes me more physically exhausted, again it's hard to say. Track makes me sore in a way robotics never could, but robotics makes us work longer than the track team does.

In the end, while robotics is defiantly not a traditional sports team, I think that it has a lot of similarities in a lot of different ways. But everything varies from robotics team to robotics team, and sport to sport.

Just as another note, high jump is a strange sport, but no one would argue that it is not a sport. In high jump, we make a jump, get advice from our coach on what to change in the next one, and than sit and wait for 5 to 10 minutes for our name to be called again. We have to really strategize what to do for each of our limited jumps, because every one counts in the final standing. As far as I can tell, this is a very similar experience to the drive team (granted I'm not on the drive team). The drive team plays a match, and has to focus on what they are doing in that match, and not being too mental about it (very similar to what I have to do to jump). They then finish the match, and look at how the strategy works. Then, they go and prepare for the next one. What they do in that match also has to be calculated, and they have to just do what they need to do.

For me, all of this sounds like my high jumping process, which would mean that at least at the competition level, there is virally no difference between an athlete competing and a robotics team competing.

These are all just my opinions and observations as both and athlete and robotics team member.

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by TheModMaster8

I'd have to disagree with you, I've played on a club Soccer team for 4 years and I've been apart of FRC for 4 year and I can say the Sports are more taxing on your body physically, though FRC is more taxing on the mind. Also I would not consider FRC a Sport, rather more of a club-a-tition. . . club vs. club.

Club is almost a dirty word on our team. Club carries with it a connotation of something you only sink part time into, something that you don't devote yourself to. We stopped calling ourselves a club some time ago after we realized it hurt our contributions from potential sponsors.

[highlander]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

FRC is a sport. Why? Because we compete. The ultimate end result is a winner. If you do not win, you lose.

Cross-Country is a sport.
NASCAR is a sport.
Golf is a sport.

All of these are sports where you compete against another person or team - but ultimately you are competing against yourself - to produce your best result.

So yes, FIRST is a sport.

I have to disagree. Your definition for sport is very off. Certainly all of the above are competitions, but having something where you compete simply doesn't mean its a sport.

Are marching bands a sport?
Is chess a sport?
Are math competitions a sport?
Is juggling a sport?
Do eating competitions qualify as sports?
Is the lottery a sport?

All of the above have winners, but most would not qualify as sports. Where do you draw the line? Simply having a winner isn't a sufficient answer.

[cxcad]

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

By definition, robotics is not a sport. Is there anything wrong with robotics not being a sport? The real problem is that there is not enough recognition for non-sport school activities. It sucks that the robotics, math teams, and other academic activities have to fight tooth and nail for funding. What needs to happen is a cultural change that values both physical and mental activities.