[FRC Blog] Helping Rookie Teams

[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 10/14/14: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...g-Rookie-Teams

Helping Rookie Teams

Blog Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - 12:55

While total FRC team registrations for the 2015 season have been coming along nicely, we are a little behind on our rookie teams compared to last year at this time, and we could use your help! Do you know of any rookie teams that need some help registering, or any potential teams that need some encouragement? How about reaching out to them to touch base? Sometimes just a positive word or two is all it takes, and you may end up being the key that opens a whole new world of possibilities to some very deserving students.

If they have any questions about FRC at all, they can email frcteams@usfirst.org, or call our very friendly and helpful customer service folks at (800) 871-8326, extension 0, from 8:30AM – 5:00PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.

Thanks!

Frank

[lynca]

In the past, I recommended many schools to start FRC teams. Now I am much more cautious and ask many more questions.

Questions for potential FRC rookies:
1. How long has the program being doing STEM activities (FTC, VEX...) ?
2. Is the teacher willing to commit for multiple years ?
3. Does the team have mentors in place ?
4. Will the team be able to have sponsors for year 3 and beyond ?

Are there other questions that need to be asked before schools consider FRC ?

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by lynca

In the past, I recommended many schools to start FRC teams. Now I am much more cautious and ask many more questions.

Questions for potential FRC rookies:
1. How long has the program being doing STEM activities (FTC, VEX...) ?
2. Is the teacher willing to commit for multiple years ?
3. Does the team have mentors in place ?
4. Will the team be able to have sponsors for year 3 and beyond ?

Are there other questions that need to be asked before schools consider FRC ?

• Are all members (student and adult) willing and able to meet 15-20 hours per week (or more) during build season?
• What fabrication resources will the team have?
• What facilities will the team have available for build space?

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by lynca

Are there other questions that need to be asked before schools consider FRC ?

Are the students willing to dedicate significant amounts of time to the team?

[The_ShamWOW88]

Originally Posted by Whippet

Are the students willing to dedicate significant amounts of time to the team?

Are the parents/guardians of said students willing to allow said students the time required?

How much parent/guardian involvement/interest do you have?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by The_ShamWOW88

Are the parents/guardians of said students willing to allow said students the time required?

How much parent/guardian involvement/interest do you have?

IMO, this is probably the #1 most important question set. It might fall to #2, but only behind the mentor commitment level long-term.

And the reason for that is this: If one of the other aspects fails, and the parents are behind the team, they can and will do as much as they can (and/or assist the students to do as much as they can) to keep the team alive for another year. If the parents are not involved, the team will fold very easily if one of the other legs (mentor or funding) is yanked.

I am willing to bet that of the FRC teams that have folded over the years, the vast majority did not have their parents supporting them. Probably most of the rest had "minimal support" and a shallow mentor base.

[wireties]

Students are awesome, they love it once they get involved. Dedicated teachers and mentors are the core of a team and lack of them is a killer. Maybe teams with good mentor situations can do a lone-a-mentor-ish type of thing. We talked about that in Texas one year and I put my name in the pot but got no calls.

Perhaps FIRST could facilitate a more structured effort?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by EricH

IMO, this is probably the #1 most important question set. ...
I am willing to bet that of the FRC teams that have folded over the years, the vast majority did not have their parents supporting them.

Eric is right. Committed parents will step into whatever role is necessary to sustain a team -- I know several who have remained committed long after their kids graduated. Some become mentors, some become key volunteers, some sustain booster organizations. Generally, I think these key parents become committed because they get the FIRST vision.

[Brandon Ha]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Eric is right. Committed parents will step into whatever role is necessary to sustain a team -- I know several who have remained committed long after their kids graduated. Some become mentors, some become key volunteers, some sustain booster organizations. Generally, I think these key parents become committed because they get the FIRST vision.

I think the hardest thing about parents is the post graduation years and why some rookies continue for only one year after there initial year. Parents obviously want to watch their child succeed and if it takes a year of sucking it up they can do it, for them its worth it to see their "adults" graduate happy. But after they graduate, after they have sucked it up they leave. What else do they have to stay for. On my team, we had two business mentors leave at the same time. For the offseason, we did not know how to contact our sponsors, they even thought they were talking to one of the mentors.

I guess what I am trying to say is, its the parents who are the most influential in keeping a school's FRC Team successfully running. They can get the school boards to allow and push the program through. They are the ones who are care free about the success of the team, only driven on the success of the kids because their kids were there.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by lynca

In the past, I recommended many schools to start FRC teams. Now I am much more cautious and ask many more questions.

Questions for potential FRC rookies:
1. How long has the program being doing STEM activities (FTC, VEX...) ?
2. Is the teacher willing to commit for multiple years ?
3. Does the team have mentors in place ?
4. Will the team be able to have sponsors for year 3 and beyond ?

Are there other questions that need to be asked before schools consider FRC ?

• Would your team be able to continue after the departure of any one mentor?
• Do you have a model for sustaining the "operational knowledge base" of the team (i.e. making sure important knowledge gets passed on and thus does not vanish with member turnover)?
• Are your students motivated, or will they just be watching the mentors work?
• Do you have a clear plan for team logistics and organization? Is that plan sustainable for multiple years?

I agree that people are not nearly as cautious as they should be when starting FRC teams. I think this is in part because FIRST themselves do not do a particularly good job of indicating just how difficult it is to get a sustainable team running. There's a bit of conflict-of-interest there, I think, as FIRST clearly wants to see as much growth as possible, but there are drawbacks when large numbers of rookie teams fall through the cracks and disappear after their first year.

I also think there needs to be more emphasis on developing robust, distributed organizational structures that are resistant to turnover and mentor loss. I do not think the "one or two passionate mentor(s) holding a team together" model is a fundamentally sound one, and there needs to be some hard thought towards how to avoid it.

[PayneTrain]

Maybe rookie registration is low this year because we're running out of schools to bomb with a few thousand dollars and then leave alone until they either survive or crumble?

You know what's hard? Starting a rookie FRC team.
You know what's harder? Keeping an FRC team alive for 4 years.
You know what's seemingly impossible? Trying to restart an FRC team somewhere where it failed but should not have, years after it folded.

[Tungrus]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

...
You know what's hard? Starting a rookie FRC team.
You know what's harder? Keeping an FRC team alive for 4 years.
You know what's seemingly impossible? Trying to restart an FRC team somewhere where it failed but should not have, years after it folded.

I totally agree with these statements. There are many teams in MI that couldn't survive. Resources is one big hurdle...student's time commitment is another. The lure of scholarships is not so attractive, the big $$$ amount looks good, but only a handful of students from 300+ teams in MI get any scholarship.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Maybe rookie registration is low this year because we're running out of schools to bomb with a few thousand dollars and then leave alone until they either survive or crumble?

You know what's hard? Starting a rookie FRC team.
You know what's harder? Keeping an FRC team alive for 4 years.
You know what's seemingly impossible? Trying to restart an FRC team somewhere where it failed but should not have, years after it folded.

We don't only see the effects of this on team sustainability, too. A lot of the "box-with-wheels" problem that people complain about at competition, I believe, is precisely because we have a lot of teams starting up with absolutely no idea of what they're getting into. It's something I really wish FIRST would address.

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Maybe rookie registration is low this year because we're running out of schools to bomb with a few thousand dollars and then leave alone until they either survive or crumble?

You know what's hard? Starting a rookie FRC team.
You know what's harder? Keeping an FRC team alive for 4 years.
You know what's seemingly impossible? Trying to restart an FRC team somewhere where it failed but should not have, years after it folded.

Agreed. We started a rookie team in 2013 that won RAS and went to St. Louis to compete and they couldn't survive for a second year.

[SenorZ]

My first team, 3677, survived two years due to financial issues. It is hard, especially in lower income areas to secure recurring funding. Folks that make big donations want to see big results. If all you have is a "box on wheels" they're unlikely to continue financial support.

There is also the issue of teacher support if the team is housed in a school. If the teacher can't put in the hours, the team can't compete on the same level as veteran teams.