Becoming Competitive

[Ichlieberoboter]

I am a sophomore on a very small team from a small town in northern Minnesota. Our team was founded in 2008, however throughout our years as a team we have never been able to get much funding in order to do anything like building two robots or competing in more than one regional. We've always been small and had limited resources and done fairly average at competition. Last year, my friend and I joined the team from one of the FLL teams that was started by our team. We're pretty passionate about robotics, so we do things like live stream competitions most weekends and use chief Delphi frequently (not so much her) so we can study strategy and prepare. We are also the only people on the whole team that read the rule book this year, resulting in me having to explain the rules of the game in the queuing line () which was not good. Our team never submitted chairmans before we joined and did the entire thing by ourselves last year. Basically, we really want to be competitive but the rest of our team, though they really enjoy FRC, doesn't really care much about that. This year the two boys that were in charge the past few years (that insisted on keeping the team small and not submitting chairmans and driving the robot even though they didn't read the rules) are leaving, so we are hoping to really organize and expand the team this summer. We already have 3 demos set up and are planning a summer camp. We are also writing a team manual so people know what to expect, but it seems like there's a lot more we need to do. My friend and I have been doing a lot of outreach projects like making an app about FIRST Robotics that has reached over 100 countries, which is great for chairmans but hasn't really helped much for team growth. Another issue we've had the years I've been on the team is even though we have a very small team, we often had 2 or 3 people working on the robot and everyone else just sitting around doing nothing because they didn't have exact instructions to be doing something. After around 2 hours, everyone would just go home because they were tired of working. We always ended up with an average robot that we were scrambling to finish at competition. What we're trying to figure out now is how to expand and organize our team, get more funding, and get the people involved being productive. Sorry for how rambling this post is, but we just really want help to make our team more competitive next year. Thanks for any advice you can provide!!

[Basel A]

Sounds like a tough situation. The first thing I'd say is that a team needs to be on the same page about team goals. If some people have very different goals, that's going to cause friction. For your team, a goal to be selected for the elimination matches would probably sound reasonable to everybody. Actually achieving that goal.. I could get into that if you'd like.

You discuss how it seems like a number of your fellow students aren't working without exact instructions. Most high school students aren't self-starters. You clearly are, and it sounds like you're doing a great job in the work you're doing. But your fellow students need to be adequately prepared for the tasks they're doing. This can be accomished in trainings in the fall, you could also attend workshops (I know UMinnesota hosts workshops).

Building up and retaining knowledge in your team is critical. Typically adults take on most of that role, but it doesn't have to be that way. Your second season as a student should be your first as a mentor!

People should also want to do what they're doing. Encourage people to find what they enjoy doing, and encourage people when they're doing. If you take the mindset that they're the problem, you'll never reach a good solution.

Essentially my advice boils down to this: right now, you're wearing a lot of hats and filling in every gap personally. If you want to be successful now and you want your team to keep being successful once you're gone, you've got to be a leader and create a culture of shared knowledge and work.

That's going to be hard. Most of the time it's easier to just do the work yourself rather than teach and lead and encourage and delegate, but a team of 2 or 3 is not going to be successful, neither on the field nor in the real goals of FIRST.

[mentos54]

As someone who recently came to a team much like yours, I can understand where your cooking from. For us, the students were willing to work more, but the mentors werent. If you have a similar issue, then you could try getting a parent who is willing to stay on the shop and allow students to work.

Also, remember that sometimes the drive to succeed needs help, so it can take a while to get where you want. Don't give up if it looks hopeless

[the_godfaubel]

Step 1: become passionate about what you do. While you have this down, you need to instill that same passion in the rest of your team. There's a reason why the "I" in FIRST stands for Inspiration.

Step 2: obviously, get funding. There are many ways to go about this: you could have fundraisers like a car wash, talk to parents to see if they work for someone that could sponsor you, or just call around to see if companies are interested in potentially sponsoring you, etc...

Step 3: getting out your comfort zone. There are teams that will specialize in one type of design and just stick to it. Don't be afraid to try new ideas. Now, obviously, this can sometimes be limited by funding, but that's why it's after the funding step.

Step 4: make sure everyone understands the rules! The biggest way to fail at competition is by not knowing the rules and potentially costing your alliance a match. Obviously, this affects how you are viewed by other teams and can decrease your odds of being selected during alliance selections.

Step 5: find a strategy that works well. This is kind of vague, but there's a reason that the best robots don't always win at every competition. A great robot is nothing without a good strategy.

Step 6: have fun! It's hard to do well at a competition without having any fun, so make sure it's enjoyable to your team. This will probably bring out the best in them and make them want to do it again.

For obvious reasons, there's probably numerous other things you can do to become competitive. I hope this helps and wish you and your team the best of luck in achieving your goals.

[Boltman]

I think you need several strong students (you and your friends ) and several strong mentors in different roles to really get a team focused on being competitive.

It sounds to me like there is a lack of enough people in key roles to drive the competitiveness you seek.

Any way in your area to recruit more mentors in key aspects of a robot season? Then students can choose what area to focus on that they enjoy.

Not everyone likes reading rules..that is OK as long as some group does then filters it down to the drive team and constantly monitors the builders to not get sloppy with constraints. Try to establish different groups led by a strong mentor of each area you need focus on

For us a fairly small and lower resource team we break it down into the following groups with roughly 20 dedicated students and 6-7 mentors :

CAD
Programming
Builders
Strategy/Scouts/Rules
Outreach/Publicity/Team Image/Photography

I'm sure its harder in your area to find enough people. We have a lot of tech and industry in our area BUT we are really small compared to many established teams in the area with all year classes or 80 students . What makes us "go" is the laser sharp focus and passion of each group.

For instance I developed the scouting department last year "from scratch" Why? Because we needed that edge.(expanding the role of the strategy department) that was good for several wins each event by making our drive team perform better and build a customized to our traits elimination alliances. It made a huge difference in how the entire team performed. Us as #8 took down #1 in 2 games, #3 rank in CV. Semis in Ventura last year only losing to 330/1717 by six points (one scoring play)

My scouts LOVE IT they now scout better than I do. Its about finding the passion and aligning both mentors and students in areas THEY ENJOY and have a passion for.

You can do it. These powerhouses of which we in CA have are some of the best in the world, they may have seemingly unlimited resources and have companies donate facilities to fabricate parts off their designs out of carbon fiber or whatever. That's ok you don't need that to be competitive. Being able to know you enter the competition with a fairly high chance to win it regardless who is entered in it tends to breed the next season of passion to iterate a better entry. This is not rocket science. Durability, efficiency, drive train wins games.

You don't have to do it alone...you get two other bots to help you. Just make sure you are a solid partner, We view powerhouse laced events as an opportunity to get better elimination alliance partners. We try to maximize any event we enter by being high enough rank to build a plausible elimination winning alliance.

Every year we learn critical lessons...every year we build a better bot most any higher alliance would want as a partner. Conversely we are very picky about the partners we choose they have to maximize our alliance potential and we know that through scouting.

You just need focus.We started from scratch three years ago and ONE person with any previous robot experience. We had absolutely no clue what we were doing the first year. A surprise trip to the worlds that year showed us the way forward. KISS.

Engineering| Programming| Driving| Scouting
....all are super critical.

Feel free to PM me anytime if you need any strategy or scouting tips. That is my focus for our team. I believe we scout better than most teams by keeping it simple and cutting out the "noise" try to be efficient in EVERYTHING you do. Its all about cycle times and max points. Its critical for your team to feel successful to be successful..and competitive.

Don't underestimate the value of tennis balls duct taped on (perfect height for LG) we do ghetto if it works.

[Just Doug]

Before you start down the path of making your team better, you have to ask yourself why. If you are doing it because you want to have more fun while you are a student the job isn't as complicated as if you were wanting to build the team for lasting success. As a mentor I clearly prefer the latter, but it can be a lot of work.

If you are only worried about the short-term, you need to learn how to inspire and delegate. No man (or woman) is an island, building a competitive robot can keep dozens of people occupied for the entire build season. You should look for someone to take on a project manager role. This person's job it is to maintain the overall vision, and ensure that anyone who wants to work has work to do.

If you want to build the team for the long term, you need to work on the above, but you should also prioritize recruiting adults to the team. Mentors are the long term memory of an FRC team, and critical to making sure that success is repeatable. In your situation a mentor who has had previous experience with a successful team is worth their weight in gold; they will actually understand how to work some of the changes that you need to make to become a great team. If you have trouble finding adults, the first place to go is parents. They are already involved and are likely to know someone with the urge to play with robots. The biggest drawback is that you may find yourself needing to train them. When you have exhausted parents work on making friends in the first community; experienced mentors do move around, either for work or other just a change in scenery. Knowing FRC people in the area gives you a better shot at picking up a mentor like that.

Realize that regardless of what you are trying to do, you are probably going to run into resistance. Change is scary for people. As a student your best bet is to figure out how to get as many people as possible on your side, and slowly work towards your goals. Don't try to quash opposition, it will only wear you out and make people bitter. Personally I'm still trying to figure out a way past that.

Improving a team is long work. I rejoined 1296 as a mentor in 2012 (I was a student in 2004). Over that time we went from being a team that was happy to have a working robot, to one that always plays in elims, usually as a picking team. It is a process that takes time and people. Good luck. Working on this will give you a ton of skills that are useful after you graduate.

[IKE]

I really like Basel's post. Formulating team goals IMO is crucial.

Would you have an option of attending a different event? The reason I ask this is it appears your team historically attends the same 60+ team event. This means that you need to be in the top 1/3 (sort of) to compete in Elims.

With the last 8 picks often going to very special strategy, I try to recommend through MCC threads targeting to be a "top 16" team at an event. With 64 teams, this would be top quartile (top 25%) vs. say a 40 team event that would be top 40%. Obviously there is a pretty good chunk of difference there.

For teams that seem to fall around the average or slightly below average performance, this is often due to poor execution of design or synthesis. usually the poor execution comes from Biting off more than you can chew. Hence my discussion on MCC.

This year, if you do a chassis that is properly geared with 8" pneumatic tires, and the ability to score in the low goal 4 cycles a match, you would be top 25% for most regionals and districts that have occurred so far. You likely will not win an event, but definitely would be playing in elims, and likely doing very well. 6086 in Michigan is a great example of this.

I am a firm believer that to go from OK to good, or being competitive, this is the second step after goals. If you follow this, you will become more competitive and have measured success. Success breeds excitement and and enthusiasm which in turn can turn to passion which is necessary for future growth needed to turn good to great.

If there is a very good or great team nearby, you could also humbly ask them to work with you for a year or two. While this is often a "rookie thing", I believe that it can be a good experienced thing too. I know of several programs here in Michigan that sought the advice/help of those doing very well, and improved their programs. One such program went from playing 1 QF round out of about 6 events in 2008 & 2009 to Einstein last year. They went from being a sometimes 3rd to a solid third partner to a top 16 to a top 8 to a top 4 to arguably the best in the state last year. Their story is incredibly inspirational for me. If you can't figure out who I am talking about, send me a PM.

[Joe Johnson]

A lot of great suggestions. I will only add 2.

#1, get agreement on team governance ("this is how the team is going to run, this is how we are going to come to concensus on the path ahead, this is how we are going to resolve things if concensus is aloof.").

#2, off season projects are the best way to move the needle with respect to developing the talents you need to put a good robot out on the field. Find some way to exercise all your muscles: CAD, coding, electronics & build. Add in PR/Chairmans too if you can (maybe make your project be a robot that will allow you to inspire grade schoolers or recruit more students or raise more money). A big part of a fall project is not just that your team learns new skills but that you all learn what your team is (and more importantly) is not capable of.

In my view, the #1 cause of poor performance on the field is not that robots are hard but that teams pick a robot during the concept phase that is beyond their ability to execute. Even a great team with great resources is going to have a bad time if they continually attempt to design & build robots that they cannot actually pull off.

It doesn't matter what Robonauts/CheesyPoofs/MissDaisy/Pink/LasGuerrilla/FillInTheBlank can build. You need to pick a robot that YOUR TEAM can build.

I wish you all the best.

Dr. Joe J.

[maxnz]

Originally Posted by mentos54

As someone who recently came to a team much like yours, I can understand where your cooking from. For us, the students were willing to work more, but the mentors werent. If you have a similar issue, then you could try getting a parent who is willing to stay on the shop and allow students to work.

Also, remember that sometimes the drive to succeed needs help, so it can take a while to get where you want. Don't give up if it looks hopeless

We had a similar problem because our head coaches had toddlers that they had to pick up from daycare. So we only stayed until 4:30 on average. And our school, where our shop is, requires at least one staff member from the district supervising the activity at all times. Which is why we had to leave when the coaches left.

But we did make a great robot this year.

Originally Posted by maxnz

"We're actually in danger of winning this year"
Our head build coach at our week zero event

Our best years were our rookie year-2009, and 2014. We've never made it past the quarterfinals at any event. Yet.

[hutchMN]

I would love to work with you one on one if you would like, just message me your contact details if you want that. There are a lot of workshops in MN design to take your team to the next level; one of those workshops is put on by 2502. 2502 went in depth on how they analyze a game on kickoff, how they pick a strategy for the season, and how dynamic that strategy is throughout the life cycle of the game. I know GO FIRST puts one on, and I also believe 1816 does as well.
Also, 1114 has some great resources on their YouTube channel. I would highly recommend watching them.

[Citrus Dad]

These are all great comments. I'll throw in 3 points.

I would reiterate the point of being selective about what your robot can do. We have made conscious decisions to not add features other teams have thought were critical, whether it was HP load/cycle (2013), high goal shooting (2014) or building 6-stacks (2015). Nor did we build a high climber in 2013. We had successful years in each.

Which leads me to the second point--focusing on how you can work well within an alliance and how you might manage an alliance. This is a team game, not individual. You should consider your overall role from the get go, not when you get to the competition site. That was reflected in the choices we made in each of the years I listed.

And third, building and operating a reliable robot is always a plus. Focus on build quality and use rigorous check lists to ensure that you're always performing well. Alliance captains will notice.

We also have workshop videos on designing and building robots at www.citruscircuits.org.

[Hot_Copper_Frog]

There has been a lot of really great advice in this thread so far regarding team structure, the importance of the way you execute design, and goal setting. So I'm going to touch on something a little different!

You mentioned that you and your fellow ambitious second year student came from an FLL team - that is great! One of the ways that competitive teams get -and stay- competitive is through establishing and supporting a strong progression of FIRST programs in their community. You can do this by identifying which middle schools "feed into" your high school(s) and establishing at least one FLL team at each one. If you focus on quality mentorship and keep students engaged through the program while they're young, you will end up with a freshman class every year that has already spend 2+ years in FIRST.

By getting students involved when they're younger, they are already primed and ready to get to work by the time they hit 9th grade. They already understand the core values of FIRST, and are eager to build the "big bots". You also introduce parents to FIRST in a much less intimidating manner through FLL, so they are already hooked on the program and want to be involved at the FRC level as they move up with their kids. This creates a bigger mentor/chaperone/support pool which is essential to running a strong team.

I'm not sure if this is true of Minnesota, but Michigan has moved to a system where FLL is an elementary level program, and FTC is a middle school program. This creates a really seamless "pipeline" for students to flow through as they grow and become more capable. Now that I'm seeing students come to FRC having been through both FLL and FTC, they are so capable and confident as freshman I can hardly believe it. I am so impressed with what starting FIRST young can do to help an FRC team.

This isn't an immediate fix to your issues, but if you want the team to grow and remain competitive for many years to come, I would suggest starting to put plans like this into motion. If you are already mentoring teams, make sure that you continue to provide ample support and try to expand the program.

[dradel]

I will add this to the responsesby you have gotten so far.
One of the things that I noticed on our team when it came to growing the numbers of students is there is a misconception that it is all about building a robot. Granted that is a large part but...
To attract students that might not be into the design and build part, make sure you put out there that your team could use a graphic design person or two (make fliers, design t-shirts) maybe some students that have a mind for business ( defiantly) need that, perhaps someone wants to get into law later on seems like a great person to make heads or tails of the rules and ask any questions to gdc that may need clarification.
To me there is a place for pretty much everyone on an FRC team, it really comes down to how you sell it to students.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by IKE

I really like Basel's post. Formulating team goals IMO is crucial.

I'll third this.

If your team decides that, let's say, winning a district/regional is one of your "team goals", I suggest following Karthik's advice in this presentation.

-Mike

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Ichlieberoboter

...
What we're trying to figure out now is how to expand and organize our team, get more funding, and get the people involved being productive. Sorry for how rambling this post is, but we just really want help to make our team more competitive next year. Thanks for any advice you can provide!!

Threads like this tend to be dominated by advice for improving on-the-field ranking/results.

But your post included the several other topics (education, increased participation, serving others, ... cultural change) that are the primary reason FIRST exists. I'm thrilled by the well-rounded attitude your post reflects.

And I have a couple of questions for you. They are similar to some of the questions other folks have asked.

• If you separate Robot performance from the other topics, are you
  • asking how to make a better robot; or
  • asking how to create a team that is an excellent FIRST team that, OBTW, has building a sweet robot as one of the rewarding and inspirational things the team does each year?
• If you are asking about building a better robot,
  • is it because you think it will be fun, rewarding and inspirational, regardless of how the tournament(s) unfold; or
  • is it because you think that the current robot-building part of your team's activities can be more efficient without drowning out all of the other good stuff you do; or
  • is it more because you just want a banner/trophy because winning every once in a while is a nice dose of positive feedback; or
  • is it because of some other reason?

My prejudice is to steer you away from being seduced by cloth banners and plastic trophies, and instead steer you toward weaving communal tapestries/banners from changed lives, and building a changed culture that becomes your trophy.

In less sappy terms, be a movement, not a pit crew.

Sure, build the best danged robot you can each year, judge the result using whatever criteria you set for yourselves, take that robot to a competition, and enjoy all the dimensions of being at a FRC event (including driving your robot like you stole it). Do it with a clear understanding of why you are doing it, and where that part of being a team stacks up against all the other parts that you (and the Chairmans Award evaluation criteria) mentioned.

With this in mind, you might want to create a new thread with a more precise title, or want to submit a clarified question(s) into this one.

Blake
PS: Researching this broad subject by reading the many years of CD threads the Search function will help you find, can be very enlightening.