A FIRST Warning From VA

[Gary Dillard]

Our mentors have debated these questions before, as to splitting up and sponsoring a rookie team, or combining resources with the nearest team. Some background:

Team 180 (SPAM) is in Martin County, FL where there are only 2 high schools, 15 minutes drive apart (3 next year) and no single big company for a sponsor. We have been supported by UTC/Pratt & Whitney since the beginning - they are the largest employer around but they are located in Palm Beach County to the south. The local P&W plant has faithfully sponsored 2 teams (Swamp Thing in Palm Beach County is the other) each year, even though employment has gone from about 8000 7 years ago to probably less than 1000 now since the engine business moved to Hartford. Most of the engineers on the team worked at Pratt at one time and now work elsewhere locally.

I believe that our sponsorship continues because of enthusiastic support from specific managers both locally and at UTC corporation (Dr. John Cassidy whom I saw at Nationals) who believe in the FIRST program. You've got to have a champion at the sponsor.

We aggressively pursue other sponsors and community support to keep growing the program, and each year we make critical decisions before all the funding is in place (as most teams do). But our decisions always have one focus - how do we reach the most kids with our available resources.

I must admit I'm jealous of the big teams who have engineers and machinists paid to support FIRST during the seaon. We don't have that luxury - we have a limit to our available time and take vacation days and it puts a pretty heavy burden on our families. So even if money wasn't a limit, manpower would be. There's no way we could support more than 1 team here, but we can sure reach more kids and we make every effort to do that. Our team is about 50/50 between the 2 schools and that's been true every year.

Splitting into 2 teams to get "credit" for growth is the wrong type of growth, as would creating a rookie team at the new school instead of including them with us. I think we've had the right balance - splitting the team would get us below critical mass for an inspirational program; combining resources with Swamp Thing would put too much strain on the kids in travel. We've grown each year and reached as many kids as possible.

Focus on the kids, not the teams.