"Robotics" Team or Club

[rees2001]

340 is both a club and a team. For the "off-season" months we meet weekly as a club after school & sometimes on weekends. During the season & at competitions we are a team. What does this really mean, nothing. Our school does not put much emphasis on team letters or jackets.

The school gives us work space, and freedom & support to do what we do.
2 years ago they built a MST (math, science, technology) wing on the school that is really just Tech & Robotics.
Currently the school pays 2 teachers to run the team. Next year & beyond it will be 3 teachers.
We have been recognized at sports pep rallies.
Our team has gotten more press in the school news letters and on the school website than any sports teams.
They host our team web site.
Our students get internship credit for their hours.
Our students are excused from classes to attend competitions.
In tough times the school has given us money(when we had no corporate sponsor or little sponsorship).
In good times we would never ask.
We don't try to go to multiple Regionals + Championship, we don't believe that is the point of the team.
When we need the school they support us, when we don't need them they support us even more.
These are tough times for education budgets, we believe it is better to just not ask unless we need to.
Over the past 6 years we have built a successful relationship with our school district.

I have left out a ton of what goes on around here I just don't have the time.

[Rosiebotboss]

Originally Posted by BoyWithCape195

We are only a "club". This makes it so that the BOE can give tons of money to the sports "teams" for equipment, and make us go find all our own money. Our BOE would rather give each football player a new set of pads every time the UPS truck comes (sarcastic to prove a point) then to help kids excel in math and science.....I guess.....

Team or club... In Massachusetts it makes a difference.

Sports teams are governed under a completely different set of rules. Sports come under the MIAA, Mass Interscholastic Athletic Assn., a statewide governing body. Funding is seperate from scholastics and has certain minimums. Schools have to hire a coach, have to supply minimum amt. of equipment, etc. I admit, I do not know all the rules regarding sports. But as a club, the HS does not have to supply funding except a stipend for the Staff Advisor.

We did put in for a line item in FY2006 budget to cover registration for next year. It got cut for reasons I will not get into publicly. But Rosie found a friend on the School Board and the $6k is restored.

My point is, keep plugging away. You have seen our pit displays. It took a LOT of work to do what we have done. Put robotics in the High School cirriculum, get a patent for an invention, keep kids in school and turn on female students to engineering. That' s how we did it. Do the right things and you will get the recognition and the funding.

[shyra1353]

I don't know if our school considers us a team or a club because it doesn't really make a difference in terms of funding.

However, last year on my old team, we received a great deal of funding by the school. And by great deal, I mean registration fee less $2000 (CDN). In order to obtain this though, I presented a business proposal explaining our team, what we did, what we needed the money for, how we planned to pay it back, etc. It turned out we paid back some of the money, but not all of it, which was okay with the principal as this had been a topic of discussion earlier.

I know this probably won't help you in becoming a team instead of a club, but if you would like to take a look at the proposal, email or pm me and I would be happy to find a soft copy of it somewhere to email to you.

Hope this helps

-- Shyra

[xzvrw2]

i consider it robotics teams. i say that because every has to team together to make that robot and everything else (chairmans and scouting) work.

[Mirza95vx]

Originally posted by rees2001

340 is both a club and a team. For the "off-season" months we meet weekly as a club after school & sometimes on weekends. During the season & at competitions we are a team. What does this really mean, nothing. Our school does not put much emphasis on team letters or jackets.The school gives us work space, and freedom & support to do what we do.
2 years ago they built a MST (math, science, technology) wing on the school that is really just Tech & Robotics.
Currently the school pays 2 teachers to run the team. Next year & beyond it will be 3 teachers.
We have been recognized at sports pep rallies.
Our team has gotten more press in the school news letters and on the school website than any sports teams.
They host our team web site.
Our students get internship credit for their hours.
Our students are excused from classes to attend competitions.
In tough times the school has given us money(when we had no corporate sponsor or little sponsorship).
In good times we would never ask.
We don't try to go to multiple Regionals + Championship, we don't believe that is the point of the team.
When we need the school they support us, when we don't need them they support us even more.
These are tough times for education budgets, we believe it is better to just not ask unless we need to.
Over the past 6 years we have built a successful relationship with our school district.

I have left out a ton of what goes on around here I just don't have the time.

Thats great someone mentioned to me that you guys were one of the teams from the Rochester area that is considered a team. This is our rookie year so we don't have much of a relationship with our School Board.

Do you by any chance know how you guys became a team and what process you had to go through to be recognized as a team.

[tiffany34990]

it's basically up to the school...we are tech. regarded as a club but we consider ourselves a team

[Keith Chester]

It took several years of hard work to get our school to recognize our group as a team, complete with naming our adviser the head coach of said team and getting him an assistant coach (with small bonuses in their pay). While they're still football oriented, we're beginning to turn their hearts away from the pigskin.

In order to be recognized as a team you must present yourselves as one. Our team presented itself as a team, with proud members wearing their ridiculous shirts throughout the halls, our long hours of hard work, staying far later during the build season than any football team did for any practices. We always carried ourselves as calm and collected, just as a true team would.

Then again, I see 25 as more a family than a team.

Don't worry. I've seen many school boards be resistant to the idea of a robotics team, and it's not because they're afraid of change or simply don't like the team- it's that they don't get it. They don't understand the time we must put into each bot for it to operate, the work and stress we endure to ensure we make each match.

The difference between a robotics "club" and a robotics "team" can be described in one particular moment this year at South Carolina. We came off the field, rushing the bot back to the pits. While we were victorious on the field, it was not without cost- the wire that runs our telescoping mast had been entangled in the bot's innards. The proper fix would take 10 minutes to 20 minutes. Unfortunately, we had a match in 3 minutes. Without a word the pit crew descended on the bot, each member taking care of each part with a flow and speed that would make nascar pit crews envious. Without words being traded amongst each pit member, each piece of the robot was checked and rechecked as repairs went on, tools being traded between hands only with monosyllabic phrases. It was as if the pit crew was one being, one entity, swallowing the bot whole to produce the fixed version. We made the next match before our opponents did, with a completely fixed robot.

That is the work of a team.

[Alaina]

The funny thing is, my school doesn't have any teams at all.
So, we're definitely considered to be merely a club who takes a lot of field trips. Even our advisor calls it a club, still.
I would really like to be the first official team at my school, but I don't see it happening no matter how much we beg. There's just not enough room in my school's budget to add us in...

[Goobergunch]

Although we consider ourselves a team, officially we're an "activity", just like the Malvern Theater Society or the Blackfriar Chronicle (school newspaper). Trying to get our school to recognize us as a team would probably first involve getting our school to recognize us much beyond the money the Malvern Father's Club gives us, which was just enough to buy a drill press and a tablesaw this year. Given that everybody started shouting "battlebots" when I mentioned FIRST robotics in economics class the other day (long story), I think we need to increase recognition of who we are before we could be recognized as a team.

[JakeGallagher]

We're in kind of a unique position as far as I can tell...
Our school considers us a team for everything that could hinder us, like when it comes to being on the team based on grades (usually not a problem, except near competition time when most of our seniors are in AP classes and start neglecting their homework for sleep after FIRST lets out), when we are going to competitions, the entire team has to go on a bus, so we have a really hard time getting our tools to and from the venue, and when ever we have to do anything that a "team" does for team unity, we're considered a team. That's because we're called a team.
As for anything else that "teams" at my school get, we're officially a club. Examples: school funding, being able to hang our banners in the gym, putting our trophies in the trophy case, and getting a second bus for the team's fans (all three of them, since the school openly disapproves of all FIRST related propaganda, but that's a totally different story) to go to the competition with us.
So to our school, when you ask if the FIRST team is really a team or a club, it depends on the context. If you're talking about getting anything from the school, we're a club, and we have to be self sufficient. If you mean when the school wants to limit us as much as possible, we're a team...and we're treated as such.
A pessimistic view of our situation, but a very real one.

[dmurdz]

We are a team at school.

When we won the Chesapeake, we were the first team to win a championship since 2001 at our school.

[Laura 1547]

They announce us as the Robotics team during announcements so ya...I guess we're a team!

[False Illusion]

For our school, I don't think it makes that much difference either, though they probably consider us more of a club then a team. We have to fund ourselves, so we don't get money from our school itself, and the BOE just approves us going to the competitions and such. I consider ourselves a team though.

[1086Programmer]

Robotics is a team. Although we're regarded as a club at DRHS, I am a firm believer that Robotics is a team. For all the time the teams put into their Robots and the competitions, I think Robotics teams at school should be more important and supported than any sports team.

But that's just me, and I don't play sports. You prolly can tell. XD

[Termite233]

they always call us the Robotics Club...which upsets many kids on the team including me. we are a team. we work and we compete just like other teams. but the school doesnt seem to care. they give us no funding. we get excused absences for trips only. we can't leave school early and it be excused during build season (at my school. at the other school on our team they can because they have a robotics class last period...) it really bothers a lot of the kids. when we got back from the denver regional, they still havent announced that we went l;et alone winning the regional or getting the chairmans...so they dont really care about us...we dont have a trophy case or anything at our school or anything that even shows we exist so they definitely consider us a club. our picture in the yearbook is about 1-2 inches. they athletics each get a full page...not fair but c'est la vie. one must not create too much havoc at one time. we'll just be content being unrecognized until we do something great(an in FIRST, everything is great). then people can say they knew us back then...i think i strayed from the topic...oops