Team in Danger!

[KenWittlief]

Three things:

1. Definately build a robot this year and goto at least one regional. You cannot under-estimate the importance of the official events on the moral of your team, and the life of your team (future funding).

2. Make everything as simple as possible. Design a base model robot (FIRST drive train and frame) with the simplist attachments and features you can come up with. If it moves and it passes the inspection, then you have succeeded. If you get over ambitious and your team shows up with a non-functional robot then team moral will take a huge hit.

3. If you dont have funds to send your whole team to the nearest regional then you only 'need' to have 5 people there: the 4 on-field players and one adult mentor. Two hotel rooms and a borrowed mini van are very inexpensive.

In other words, set your goal as the bare essentials / minimum requirements for all aspects of your team. Then if you can do better than that, and have 10 people attend the regional instead of only five, or you add some additional subsystems to your robot, then your team has done better than expected.

A survival mode mindset will get you through this year.

[Drew Hopman]

We had the same problems back in 2003 and now again this year. All but two students on last years team graduated last year. We also lost two of our main sponsors, going from a 30k a year budget to 6k is very hard but we are making it work. Just hang in there everything will work out for the best.

[Nita]

From what I know, my team was made up of two of the schools in the district. Now it's only my school, and looking at the back of my t-shirt, we have three sponsors other than my school(one of them is called "the cad store" and I asked what in the world that was, but no one gave me an answer yet).

For in-school fundraisers, candy is popular. I myself sold 70 truffles bars this year(10 sold on an average day). All I did was carry a clear bag(like ziplock) of truffles to every one of my classes, put it on my desk and people would buy them.

I am really sorry to hear about your team's situation. My sister's school's FLL team(their first year) has disbanded because the teacher didn't find time to do it. As long as all of you, your mentors, and your teachers are willing to do this, you should be able to. So keep your hopes up!

[CarpeDiem]

we where in the same situation this year. the school was going to cut our funding for reason i am not going to go into, but we just went to local companies and got sponsership, we found every machine shop with in 20 miles and called them up and we are doing fine now.

[aaeamdar]

Our team is kind of (I think) a non-standard set-up. What happened was that we were going the be the Park School FRC team. Skipping over boring details, we found another school called the Science and Math Academy of Auberdeen (SMA) and were going to establish a partnership BUT they weren't really contributing anything except students (they choked off our fundraising options in the area) so now it IS the Park team that excepts outside students. Most of which happen to be from one school.

Our school wouldn't have enough kids to make a complete team (and by complete I mean build a robot, not do fancy web graphics n stuff) by ourselves. So far, it's worked out pretty well.

Anyway, in terms of your current difficulties: try not to get discouraged =)!

As several people on this thread have said, multi school programs can be great! If your school isn't big enough/interested enough (interest is our problem) try and talk to local to local schools that might have been wanting to start a team but were unable to or or just haven't done it yet.

Someone may have said this already, but try scouting the upcoming freshman class (if you can).

Best of luck, and keep your hopes up!

Team 1719

[BrianR]

Originally Posted by Jill1022

[*] 1/3 of our team is graduating this year and their knowledge wasn't passed on nearly as well as we'd have liked.

My team was a rookie last year, and everyone except for 4 of us were seniors. As such, they had the greatest role in building the robot, and now we had a huge boom in interest, so we have had to take alot of time to teach the new kids. Being one of the four veterans, I am glad that we will be competing, as it gives everyone a chance to work for a deadline, and then compete in the real tournament. I think that even if you are unable to field the best robot due to the lack of experience, the chance to compete in a regional is very important experience for the new teammembers. If money is an issue, thats a different problem, but for the lack of experience, it just means you may have to look to some slightly less intense solutions to the problems.

[Arkorobotics]

"News team! ASSEMBLE!!!" -Ron Burgundy

What I mean by that is, you should call out to your community and your school. Get more people interested. I hate to see this happen to anyone. Try to call around and hook up through connections.

Good Luck! And I wish you all the best