Small team club

[Anthony Galea]

Team 5239, Harper Woods Pioneers, is a team we started in 2014 and continue to mentor today. In their first year, they had 1 student and 3 mentors, and they got the Highest Rookie Seed and the Judges' award at the Bedford district. In 2015, they grew to around 7 students with 2 mentors, and won the Center Line Judge's award, and this year they are at about 5 students with one mentor, with one of the students doing most of the work that has been on the team since 2014. They're a really great group of kids.

[GeeTwo]

The smallest FRC team I've seen was at Bayou last year. I don't recall their number but they were rookies. There was one mentor and no more than four students. They had significant issues keeping up with the match schedule and keeping the robot operable (we sent them a bit of help in the pit). With one student, you must be the driver, there can be no human player, and the three of you must do any repairs/maintenance on the robot as well as take care of match strategy. My prayers go with you, and I heartily encourage you to find a large team to provide you with some assistance keeping track of the things you have to do.

I would never advise having an FRC event competition team smaller than about eight students and three mentors. Two to three times this is necessary to do scouting and provide some volunteers at the event. This year, we had two students and a mentor as field crew, mentors serving as inspector and at the spare parts table, and we staffed the FLL table and a craft table, as well as scouting the competition. We also usually have two or three of our pit crew and/or mentors not on duty in our pit roaming the pits looking for teams (most often rookies, but not always) in need of help. We had about 24 students and ten coaches/mentors this year, which was really a bit smaller than we would like. No one was in any danger of boredom, and most of us had to eat lunch at odd times (to reduce time in line) and quickly.

It's even more difficult to do any of the "more than robots" part of FIRST without more than a dozen members.