Club vs Team Approach

[DaveL]

Hi All:
I'm conflicted between a club vs a team approach to running an FRC team.
By club, I mean no tryouts, easy to join, right after school and focused on education. By team, I mean dues and build hours are required. Week night and weekend meetings. Plus the focus is on constructing a robot.

During the Fall we get a ton of students and run more like a club.
We get a low turnout on the weekends. It doesn't matter if its a general build day, a workshop or an outreach event.

In the winter we morph into more of a team and lose a large number of students, but the students that remain are more committed to attending meetings and building a robot.

Does aiming to be a team and being more restrictive from the beginning help you compete and be able to deliver a more technical student education?

I would like to learn if other teams have had these issues, how they improved and how they would rate themselves on a club / team dimension.

Dave

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by DaveL

I'm conflicted between a club vs a team approach to running an FRC team. By club, I mean no tryouts, easy to join, right after school and focused on education. By team, I mean dues and build hours are required.

Why are these mutually exclusive?

[Monochron]

I'm sure you'll get lots of answers here, but your first step is probably to ask the current members what they want. We asked our (then club) what they wanted and it was almost a unanimous decision to become a "team". Have a frank conversation about the differences and the benefits of becoming a team and then maybe take a vote. Ultimately, it is up to the groups leadership, but getting a feel for the room can be very useful.

[Sperkowsky]

We changed this year to become a "team" and I think it has minimal but positive results. People realized from day one what was "required" of them which prevented a lot of Freshman from joining activities that would usually prevent them from coming. Overall we have had a better turn out then ever bringing about 15 people to our last competition despite the fact that a large amount of our members had to be at a football game (band members).

I feel like even just saying team instead of club has a positive effect.

[GreyingJay]

2706 is a new community team, and with no specific school backing, we have to focus on our end goal (building an FRC robot good enough to compete in regionals) while also juggling the start-from-zero aspect. We have to temper our expectations with practical realities like expending time trying to find meeting spaces, build spaces, fundraising like mad. The nice thing is that we are open to students from ALL local schools.

We call ourselves a team and we do charge a team fee to cover basic expenses. Sometimes parents will ask us "can Billy join your robotics club?" and we say "sure, Billy can join the robotics team". (Emphasis added here but NOT when we talk to the parents.) We are going to have an all-hands meeting soon where we will talk about what's going to happen during build season and competition season. We have a lot of hockey kids in my area so hopefully people will see that we're not dissimilar in terms of expectations of commitment and time. Since we're not at a school students will need to be driven to meeting/build spaces so we will definitely need parental commitment.

We are not (yet?) stipulating mandatory attendance requirements. Come when you can. But we do make it clear "you get out what you put in" and that when it comes time to choose team leaders and select people for competition teams, selection will naturally favour those who have been around, who have demonstrated skill and knowledge, who know the software, know the robot, know the tools, and are known and trusted by teammates.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

(band members)

We really do seem to attract the same type of students that are attracted to Marching Band don't we? We have a decent chunk of band students on our team too, and let's just say that we aren't the band director's favorite people in the world because of it.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Plus the focus is on constructing a robot.

Just curious, what would the focus be on, if not constructing a robot?

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Just curious, what would the focus be on, if not constructing a robot?

Just taking a friendly shot in the dark here...

The focus could be on inspiring students and on changing/inspiring the community around the team.

Some people (but not all) are silly enough to suggest that in FRC the robots are only a part of the "means" and that they aren't the "end".

Others have different motivations.

YMMV.

Blake

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by gblake

The focus could be on inspiring students and on changing/inspiring the community around the team.

Some people (but not all) are silly enough to suggest that in FRC the robots are only a part of the "means" and that they aren't the "end".

Others have different motivations.

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding if you're joking/being sarcastic. Care to elaborate on what you mean?

Towards OP: Personally, I think a large part of what FRC is is having the robot be the "means". In my FRC experience, my team was a "team" due to team hours being counted and dues being paid, but it had relaxed atmosphere where the robot wasn't the main issue. The two definitions you gave don't have to be mutually exclusive, as others have pointed out.

[Jon Stratis]

We straddle the line a bit. We're open to anyone being involved, and we're perfectly fine with someone that can only show up once a week. However, we have a ton of incentives to encourage increased participation (like travel requirements, lettering requirements), and almost all of our students work towards those incentives. Usually our fall program is attended less than build season, only because students are busy doing other activities (theater, cross country, soccer, and volleyball are some of the big ones, it seems).

[mrnoble]

We have dealt with this issue for years, and I think we've finally optimized it for our group.

We have an open fall, in which our "varsity" students (the veterans, especially those that have lettered the previous year) do specific training events (such as retasking the previous year's robot) and serve as mentors for the new students, the "JV" squad. JV participates in BEST robotics as an intro to the six week build, the design process, etc. There are no tests for incoming students, and everyone who shows interest is accepted as part of the group, though the "team" is yet to be established.

After BEST is finished (end of October), all students are brought together and given the expectations for participating as part of the "team":

• daily meetings, including Saturdays
• specific skill training sessions
• fundraising
• participation fee
• participation in a serious off-season build
• training in FRC history

The students who stick around become the "varsity" team, and have the opportunity to letter.

We've tried many variations, and this seems to be the most effective. The least effective was to have a "team" and a "club" at the same time. The club students felt second class, and we had a lot of conflicts. Hope this helps some.

[Tyler_Kaplan]

Essentially there is no correct or incorrect way to this. Every FRC team has their own culture, so you and your team really need to decide what works best for you.

But my personal opinion on the matter is that it should be structured and run more like a sports team. I would only have tryouts or an application process if there is a large enough group of students coming into the program. Also one of the biggest pieces of advice I would give, is that if at all possible move your meeting times back until around 6:30 for the weekdays. This is one of my favorite things that 1678 does. It allows mentors like me to be available for most meetings, because by then most people are off of work. If you want more mentor involvement, this is one of the biggest things I would do.
Also I've found that when you call yourselves a team, and have certain requirements to stay on the team, it makes the commitment from the students stronger.

So really you need to find out what will work best for your specific program, but I always fall on the side of making it stand out as not just an after school club.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Does aiming to be a team and being more restrictive from the beginning help you compete and be able to deliver a more technical student education?

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Just curious, what would the focus be on, if not constructing a robot?

Being in FIRST and putting the focus on the robot is like building a robot and putting the focus on the bandsaw (or mill or lathe, or whatever you do your machining with). The robot is a tool we use to play the game, the game is a tool we use to inspire and teach.

Even when we did not have so many applicants that we could not have them all in the spaces at one time, we were definitely on the "team" side of the balance. There are three main reasons for this:

• These days, STEM is all about working in teams. Anyone going into STEM who has not learned how to work as a team member is at a definite disadvantage.
• Our school's culture (and administration) is big on competition. Being a team rather than a club helps bring in new members, and definitely helps when the administration decides whether or not to support us with a parking lot for a practice area or a portable building for build space.
• Teams become "family", that is, learn to trust each other, far faster and usually deeper than clubs. Many of the kids we hope to inspire need to know what a family is supposed to be like. It's rather strange to think of FRC as an alternative to joining a gang, but there are a couple of cases where we may have made that big a difference in a life.

Our first three years, we never turned anyone away from the team, but we always set expectations, and awarded positions of leadership, responsibility, and prestige to those who deliver on those expectations. Team leadership is recognized and formalized, rather than elected. We have never held a truly democratic election on anything important; consensus is preferred, but when consensus fails, leadership determines the best course of action. The only time Jesse's decision on team leadership was overridden by the students was rather curious. The students as a strong consensus (next stage would have been pitchforks, torches, and power tools) told Jesse that Joey (his son) was definitely a team captain. He had dismissed Joey, afraid of nepotism complaints. After the intervention, all returned to "normal".

Last year and this year, we had more candidates than our spaces could hold, so we held "tryouts" to determine early who is willing to commit to the team. Our criteria are based on attitude, not aptitude, though we do get good aptitude data as a side effect which helps place team members in their respective roles. Our tryouts are intentionally sufficiently brutal that significantly more candidates "fail to complete tryouts" than are "not selected" from those who finish. Tryouts are not as brutal as build season; the idea is to let kids flake out earlier rather than later. These cuts helped our team form an espirit de corps much earlier than ever before. This year, it's even higher, even earlier.

Finally, a personal note. In high school, I was a member of quite a few "clubs" and "activities" including National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, yearbook, newspaper, and more, but the extracurricular I remember most was competing in "Academic Games". Even though we competed as individuals, the experience of training together and cheering each other on when one of us was in the "playoff rounds" made those people constitute most of those whom I would be looking for at a high school class reunion. I ended up carpooling to college (commuting to the University of New Orleans) with three AG team members who had graduated a year ahead of me. Teams matter in ways that clubs cannot.

[JoshWilson]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

We straddle the line a bit. We're open to anyone being involved, and we're perfectly fine with someone that can only show up once a week. However, we have a ton of incentives to encourage increased participation (like travel requirements, lettering requirements), and almost all of our students work towards those incentives. Usually our fall program is attended less than build season, only because students are busy doing other activities (theater, cross country, soccer, and volleyball are some of the big ones, it seems).

Our team does the same thing, and it's worked pretty well so far. This is the setup I would recommend, and it's a great combination of the two.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Shrub

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding if you're joking/being sarcastic. Care to elaborate on what you mean?

Sure. No problem.

One of my favorite Woody-isms is that the robot is only the campfire we gather around. I 100% believe that building a robot is *not* what Dean, Woody, Dave, etc.ask (but don't insist) FRC teams to focus on year-round.

Including the word "friendly", the winking emoticon, and the YMMV acronym in my other message were an attempt to remind the reader about that in a collegial way, while still acknowledging that FRC participants are free to do whatever makes themselves happy, so long as they pay their fees and follow the rules.

No matter what they end up calling it (team, club, bee, co-op, whatever), I hope the OP's group finds an organizational style, that looks outward as successfully as it looks inward. Celebrations are more fun when lots of friends share them with you.

Blake.