How Does Your Team Recruit?

[Conor Ryan]

I agree with above, recruiting at middle and elementary schools is an awesome way to go, except I kind of take it to a different level. Starting FLL and JFLL teams goes a long way. If you start with a team of 6 year olds, 8 years later you'll have kids itching to get on the FRC team.

One tactic that I have found particularly useful is recruiting through siblings. My first year in the team was way back in the glory days of 2003. I come from a fairly large family of 4 and now some 7 seasons later I have had 1 sister graduate after 4 years of participation. I have another sister on the team right now.

And my little brother (Donagh) is known as 1403's youngest member. Donagh has been actively helping the team since he was 8 and is now in 6th grade and is working with his friends (who he has told all about the competition to) to restart an FLL team at his middle school. All of my siblings got started with the program because they got dragged to it by me after I got my parents involved (my dad is a drive coach and my mom helps with awards and various fundraisers).

However, it has evolved into doing a little bit more than just sitting around waiting for the day to end. At first they got to be runners for the team at competition (little kids can find ways around robots and crowds like you wouldn't believe). Then, it evolved into hanging around the older kids scouting robots in the pits. After that, there was some volunteering at regionals and off-seasons as a field reseter and Co-MCing Monty Madness for a few matches. Recently there has been some major progress, Donagh helped fabricate 1403's robot this past year, at a regional this past year he helped a NASA machine shop out as a runner for their parts. He did so much work this year it earned him a spot in the team picture and a trip to the NJ and Boston regionals (he really was sad he didn't get to go to Atlanta with the rest of the team). He has 2 years until he is old enough to be on the pit crew or drive team, and he can't wait to get there.

There are a lot of benefits of recruiting this way, in my opinion its the best way to train somebody. Plus you get that satisfaction of being a good older sibling. Little kids always look up to the older ones, take advantage of it and get them into this.

I have also never seen a button collection half the size of his, and I have been doing this for quite sometime.