Teams losing lots of seniors

[Conor Ryan]

Heres a bit of 1403 history,

2004: Team started, 20 students on the team. Team does well pulls off an amazing rookie season winning all the rookie awards (over various events) and pulling off an engineering award too (xerox creativity) only problem, 15 of the students are seniors. and the few students that were left were freshman, and sophmores (a few juniors)

2005: 5 students come back thats it. New advisor, new students, new mentors (EM's and NEM's) new logo, the works, we still have only a minimal number of students from the rookie year team. We got to work early, and tried to get everyone up to speed as much as we could, build season comes down and we had a build season very similar to a rookie team, the result was a slightly more developed design and it was actually a more successful robot that our first one. We pulled off another Xerox Creativity, and become runners up at the buckeye regional (229 and 135, woot!) Looking back this season was quite successful despite having nearly a complete team turn over.

2006: Our first season in where we didn't have to deal too much with a loss of students, we lost a few members but a lot of the students that rose to the challenge back in 2005 came back and are sharper than ever. We currently are enjoying a very good build season, and we are starting to act like a veteran team. God willing, we'll see results that live up to our expectations this year.

So whats the conclusion, anyone can do it. Just put your head down and keep working and learning, if you don't see the playing field level this year, look to the future where your underclassmen will have to opportunity to really lead the team. Keep working......