Quote:
Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor
If a team seriously wants to go, there is nothing stopping them from getting the funding and sponsorship to go. The only limiter is how much they care, and how much they want it.
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With all due respect, you're with a veteran team. Our rookie year we qualified for nationals (by rookie inspiration award and highest seeded rookie) and had a good robot (did well into the semifinals).
We didn't have the money to go.
I believe that any team that qualifies by FIRST's criteria (regional champs, chairman's, and ROY) should not have to pay the $5k entrance fee. That's like a baseball team winning into the playoffs and then having to fork over money to make it to the World Series.
If you didn't qualify on the basis of your competitive merits, then you should have to pay an entrance fee. But I do not think it is especially fair, even if it may be economically necessary, to charge for entrance to the national championship.
FIRST may not be ABOUT the competition, but it IS a competition.
Disclaimer: My team raises about $20k a year, and we invest about $16k into the regional, the robot, and assorted events we run (FLL, etc). That said, the two towns that comprise our district are two of the most affluent in Southern NH. Our team's founding coach was the guy behind WinZip. There is some industry in the area. But we
do scrap for funding, doing car washes, car shows, and the like. Our school is our biggest sponsor. They give us the entry fee and they've been talking about cutting that.
Hollis/Brookline has an average family income of $137k. The surrounding towns in Hillsborough County have an average of $35k. Think they can scrap together the money? The Green Team, 885 from Vermont, has something like eight kids from four towns in rural Vermont. They barely do it--there is a reason there is only one team from Vermont.
Dean says that the biggest impediment to FIRST being spread everywhere is ignorance of it. That's not true. Convincing people of FIRST's worth isn't difficult once they see it in action. The two biggest problems are a) getting people to regionals and B)
finding the money to run a program that costs $20k a year.