facilities

[artdutra04]

Don't worry Phil, our team has survived lean and tough times, but is now in a favorable position. Our original coach for our team loved robotics, but he retired in 2002. His replacement was anything but enthusiastic about robotics. He slowly made it known that he didn't like us. We met at nights and during the days on weekends in the school wood shop, and we had to content with night school two nights a week. We also had to set up and clean up everything every night - except weekends. Our team did own a Bridgeport milling machine and a lathe, which were donated to our team from a local company in our rookie year. And our storage space was somewhat tight and inconvient for storing lots of playing field pieces and old robots.

But never give up hope. There is usually greener grass somewhere else. Since our team involves three high schools, we decided to move to another one of our high schools. That other high school was overly happy that our team was moving there, and did everything they could to try to accomidate us. We now have tons of storage space, access to a full wood shop and computer lab, and we also now have our own private machining room.

So maybe your team should look to expand. See if there is any other high schools in your area which have better facilities. Don't worry too much about having to pull everything out and put it away every night. Since our team is a multi-school team, we cannot have afterschool meetings - only night meetings and weekend meetings - which has worked out fine for us for seven years now.