pic: Growth of FIRST in Michigan

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

Agree, the road is paved, please follow.

If we ever want Robotics to be a sport which competes with 'real' sports, then we all need to up our game. Sure after 25 years, we have had great success and now have tens of thousands of participants, but in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. There MILLIONS of kids who play basketball, and that it just one of several main stream sports. If we truly expect 'cultural transformation', then we need to get MUCH larger, and do it MUCH faster.

Reducing participation costs and increasing ROI to bring us closer to parity with mainstream youth activities are the best way to achieve this. Ignoring this reality will restrict growth until this change is made.

BTW: Here in Michigan, according to the data we have, in 2016 we now have more high school students participating in FIRST Robotics than we have playing Hockey. So we have actually finally passed one of the 'real' sports. Can any other robotics organization on Earth claim this?

When I talk to people, and in particular to school administrators, about the cost of FRC I use the sports model. Since we are talking about an activity for high school age students, I make the comparison to high school sports. Here are the high school sports with more than 100,000 total participants (from NFHS, for 2014-2015):

Football: 1,085,182
Track: 1,057,358
Basketball: 970,983
Baseball: 487,770
Softball: 365,528
Combined: 853,298
Soccer: 808,250
Volleyball: 486,594
Cross Country: 472,597
Tennis: 340,116
Swimming: 303,925
Wrestling: 269,704
Golf: 221,405
Lacrosse: 193,235

Since it was referenced, hockey has 45,293. So FRC is starting to push into the realm of being a "real sport" in terms of participation.

At my school, the FRC team would rank high (but definitely not at the top) of the total cost/participant. And FRC has a lot of curricular overlap. If I split the cost of equipment also used in classes then FRC is in the middle in cost. It also costs far less, for example, than our marching band. (The band having similar curricular overlap.) So I try to get them to see this as similar to adding a sport. With events that are daily driving distance away the costs per student go WAY down compared to other sports. Moving us to the bottom third.

I completely agree that we should be driving FIRST to push down the cost. I would love to see a time when FIRST manages just the championships, or even better something like "super regionals" and then championships. That would make it more like a state athletic association. And the districts manage their competitions. With a majority of the entry fee going to the districts. But I also think that we need to get schools to change how they few FRC and think of funding it like they do their band or their track team.

edit: As for mentors, that is one of the biggest hurdles. Allow me to propose one big avenue for creating new mentors: increasing participation in FRC. I also coach track and field. And finding qualified coaches is often a challenge. Particularly for technical events. As participation has grown (and more HS sports are shrinking than growing right now) it has become easier because there is a larger pool of mentors to draw from. If we can drive up participation we can also create more potential mentors. I would bet that part of the large supply of mentors in Michigan is because there are so many FIRST alumni there.