New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[Jon Jack]

To be honest, FIRST has done a horrible job at making sure the rookies continue on to be sustainable teams.

It seems like there is a lot of pressure (from FIRST HQ) on regional support staff to recruit as many teams as possible as quickly as possible. Once a rookie team is created, they're left hung out to dry. They then have to learn how to survive on their own, or fold. While there are resources available for struggling veteran teams, there are many more resources available for starting a new team.

If FIRST put as much effort and resources towards sustaining teams as they did recruiting new teams, we would not have the attrition rate we have now. One statistic I think would be interesting to see is what percentage of teams return AFTER folding? I'm betting that is a very low number. If that is the case, shouldn't it be a priority to keep veteran teams around since the likelihood of bringing a school back after they've folded is slim to none?

I think that FIRST is trying to grow too much too fast. As a result the quality of FIRST is being sacrificed. As Cory said, Regional Planning Committees are having a tough enough time finding skilled and experienced volunteers for critical positions. What happens if this becomes the future competition structure and California has 20 district events? There's no way all those district events are going to be able to find experienced volunteers for critical positions. As a result, the quality of the program will suffer. Suffer for what? So we have the room to start X number of new teams?