How to Get New Members to Stay?

[Cinnastar047]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

So give me advice on this guys. We always get over 20 new students (freshman) who signup on the "i have interest" sheet. But as soon as they find out that there is no way that there is a huge chance that they wont get to step on the field until they are atleast juniors, and even then they have to be better than others to get that position, 18 our of 20 people leave. This year we only retained one freshman. I try everything I can to keep them interested. I ask what they would like to do, I try to guide them and show them exactly how things need to be done, but they simply don't come back. Especially freshman, 90 perecent of freshman who join are super immature and kick the 2014 balls around and try to drill each others brains out no matter how much I and my mentors try to stop them, until eventualy we have to ask them to stop or leave. What do I do to get them to stop doing that.

Also out of the existing team (11 students) only 4 students actively take part during build season. SO that leads to us 4 having to do more than one task (like cading and programming and building for me). Since build season happens during baseball, soccer, and track season, the other 7 simply can't imagine skipping a day or two of practice a week to do robotics (even though I try to explain that I can find time from playing soccer, and two of the other three also do sports).
Anyone have any advice to rectify both of these problems? Thanks in advance guys.

As far as people leaving because they think they won't get to be on the field until they're juniors, I think you really have to put more emphasis on the fact that FIRST really is more than robots. We have a slight problem with this too, as the way our team functions, robot build is usually separated from everyone else and they stop appreciating each other's role as much as they should. Probably only about a third of our team is especially mechanically inclined. I think the important thing to make sure that everyone on the team remembers is that if it wasn't important, the team wouldn't be doing it, so everyone from business to driving to build is actually important to the team. As far as the immaturity and attendance issues, that's not really a problem that we have very frequently, so I don't know how to help you there. Our freshmen generally tend to be fairly respectful of the more experienced students.