Max Age for FRC Participants?

[IKE]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Technically, there is nothing (aside possibly from child labor laws) preventing a FRC team from being composed entirely of adults, and hiring for pay students off the street to drive the robot.

(I'm curious - has there ever been an FRC team such as this? I'm not talking about another mentor/student-built debate, I'm talking about a team that didn't even pretend to have students as the focus or major element.)

I heard rumors that way back in the day some teams operated close to this model, but I am talking before 2000, and just rumors. I also heard that Chairman's Award and Woody Flowers awards were mechanisms to help promote a change in the culture of FRC.

In modern FRC (say after the start of 3v3). I have only heard of a few that would approach such a model. I knew of some friends that ran a team, and had difficulty getting students to stay engaged. They moved the team to a couple different schools as the students tended to lack regular participation. The team went under, and much of that leadership started a new team, that eventually merged into a new school, and now is a well integrated school/Kids/mentors. Their goal was to engage kids, but due to logistics and other factors, it took a while to actually reach that goal, and would have looked like adults doing robot and recruiting kids to compete with it at times.

I will say when I started FRC in 2002, I thought a lot of the machines were built by adults. Over the years, and especially once districts started, I got to know the teams better and found they had different mixes of mentor and student involvement.

I Michigan, where it has been easier to start a team for may years, I have come across several teams that were a single family. Often a parent and a child are the drivers behind the team, and then a couple friends recruited to help round out a roster. Some of those simple teams have evolved into some incredibly well known teams. Others tend to drift off once the student/parent graduate.