With the announcement of Reefscape for 2025, I’d like to put out some suggestions for rookie teams and those who are struggling currently. For context, I am a senior and the coach of 9289. We are based out of Village High School in Houston TX and are going into our third year. Through a lot of turmoil and turnover of staff and students, I’d like to share what I’ve learned on how to build a good team to try and help everyone else in a situation like ours and hopefully save you from all the problems we’ve faced.
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Focus on making your team sustainable
This honestly could be a whole topic by itself. Sustainability is a major issue in FRC, and its the most pressing issue for a new team into the competition. It doesn’t matter if your team is winning competitions or the bottom of the rankings, if you cant keep it running its an issue. From my observations, there are two main reasons why teams have to fold: members and money. Either the team doesn’t have enough people to keep it going or there isnt enough money to keep it funded.Surprisingly, money is the easier problem to solve. A rookie team will need at bare minimum $6,000 to pay for entry plus additional costs for building the robot, such as motors and what not. This puts the cost per season at $10,000. It sounds like a daunting amount, trust me I’ve been there too, but if you can find some good sponsors you can easily achieve it. Another way that we’ve been doing it and I’m not particularly fond of is by charging a fee to be on the team. This fee covers our entrance fee only and the rest we gain through sponsorship. If you’re running a team out of a school, I’d start by asking your school or district for money. Then I’d apply to various grants, I know the HAAS foundation and NASA both have one. It isn’t a guarantee you get through with those so also go to your local businesses and see what you can get there. According to CHIPS (Another FRC team in Houston) you should look to get at least $1,000 per company.
Members is where you’re going to want to put most of your priority. A good team should have around 30 committed members in total. Its perfectly fine to have less, we only have 20 and some of them barely show up, but the goal for being competitive should be 30 spread across all departments. At first take whoever you can, anyone that is interested let them come in and see how it fits. Interest isn’t something that is guaranteed though so make sure you have a way to get members into your team. A good way to do this is through creating/mentoring FTC teams in your local area. This creates a bond with your team and kids who might want to go into FRC, thus creating a pipeline. Other ways could be working with science classes or mass advertising, eventually you’ll find people who want to be part of the program. I’d also prioritise doing more of the robotics before you push outreach, the sell of a robotics team is mainly the robotics so try to establish yourself and keep interest in your team before looking outward. I am not saying don’t do outreach, it’s a wonderful part of FIRST and it is very rewarding, but speaking from my experience its very hard to balance it and robotics as a new team so put more of your effort into the side that will gain you valuable members.
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Talk to other teams near you
FIRST might be the most friendly competition on earth, everyone that competes is more than willing to lend a hand so don’t be afraid to reach out and talk with other teams. Find out what other teams are nearby and reach out. If you’re looking for teams that might be near you check The Blue Alliance, its a website with all sorts of handy information about teams, their history, and all of the competitions and matches. I use it a ton as a coach and it is one you should get familiar with. Once you know who’s nearby, see if you can find anyone from those teams on here. Im new to Chief Delphi but it has a whole bunch of robotics people who seem to be very nice. If possible, see if you can get with a team for the game release. If you are a beginning team or just one with a ton of new members, having the help of an experienced team to understand the game and come up with mechanisms is very valuable. The day the game drops, all teams are on a level playing field. The experience you gain from working with other teams is priceless -
Keep documentation
Things get messy quick in robotics. You only have a few months to build before the first competitions so as the time flies by its very easy to get things mixed up. You honestly never know what you might need later on and if you aren’t properly organised it’ll bite you later on. This goes beyond just keeping your tools and supplies in order. You should note down what you did each day, what you learned, how different components function and what they are made from, just about anything will come in handy later on. Keeping documentation helps when judges come around during competition, in the moment it can be hard to remember certain details and having it all written down gives you a way to check for anything the judges might ask for. Eventually you might want to put all of this documentation into a portfolio that you can give judges to look at. Besides the impact it has when it comes to judging, documentation gives you an easy way to catch new members up to speed with your team. The learning has already been done by someone else so if you have something for them to read before they dive into whatever they are there for they won’t be struggling to understand as much as your initial students were. Documentation is something we didn’t do as a team and we are feeling the effects heavily, I can’t stress enough how much this will help you in the future. -
“Stick to a family”
This is a term I picked up at Worlds this year from a mentor of Walton Robotics (2974). The basic jist of it is that you should stick to one type of something while building. For example, don’t use multiple different motor brands, find one you like and stick with it. There isn’t anything wrong with doing that but in a place where there are so many uncontrollable variables, you should keep everything the same when you can. It makes it much easier on the students actually putting this robot together. This is more than just motors though, try to keep the same kinds of screws, use the same programming language, even stick to the same types of markers if you can. You want to make everything as simple and consistent as possible because the stress ramps up during build season and the slightest differences can have huge impacts. Consistency also makes training new members easier as they know exactly what to expect out of different parts and how to properly use them. The more you are able to keep the same in your team, the easier it’ll be to manage. -
Outsource
My best friend would kill me if I didn’t include this (You know who you are, and look I published it
). Outsourcing is the deviation of tasks among the team. At first it seems like a good idea to have people who know certain things do it all, especially if you are a smaller team, we are very guilty of that. However this only causes bigger issues down the line. Going back to sustainability, if you want your team to continue you need to look beyond just the year at hand. Eventually those people who you relied on will be gone and now you’re left worse off than you were at the beginning. Plus after a while those people get burnt out, trust me I’m one of them and I have never felt more stressed in my life. Outsourcing allows for members to take a load that won’t leave them with a crippling caffeine addiction and it teaches others the key skills needed to keep the robot running. Examples of outsourcing would be having multiple divisions in your team, like separate build and electrical teams. Try to limit overlap between teams, its fine with your drivers but don’t have one person on build, electrics, and programming. Another part of outsourcing is documentation, the more that is written down the easier it will be when new people join. Basically don’t overwork yourself, you will not only be worse off personally, but your team will suffer in the long run. -
Plan everything out
There are two big parts to this section: scheduling and CAD. The season is a lot shorter than you think, it will fly by and if you aren’t prepared it’ll end in disaster. Plan out what needs to be done at each meeting from the start until competition day. You do not have time to waste just milling around if you want to have a decent robot by the time your first competition rolls around. That being said, you do need to have some leniency, building takes time and there are bound to be issues so if a mechanism rolls over schedule its alright. Don’t be too hard on your students either, its a competition yes but let them have fun too. If you are too serious they will get burnt out and bored. Anyways back to scheduling. Make sure every member knows what needs to be done that day and that your plans are easy to find. You should also plan out what you’re doing before the season too, like building a chassis, finding sponsors, and outreach. The more you’re organised the more will end up done. Now time for the second part, CAD. It may seem pointless for a new team at first but it is the most helpful tool out there. Even if you’re starting with the kitbot, you need to CAD it out. No team is ever satisfied with the basics the kitbot provides, you are going to want to build off of it which is where CAD comes in. CAD (Computer Aided Design, I realised I never defined it, my bad) allows for you to test out different ideas before implementing them. It takes significantly less time to CAD up a design than to actually build it from scratch. You can see the exact measurements and bits you will need to assemble it and exactly how it will work on your robot. There are many different softwares for CAD, we personally use OnShape, so find one to your liking and get some practice before the season. You won’t regret it. -
Invest early on
Robotics is all about innovation, theres no denying that. You’ll see a lot of teams doing cool and complicated things, like having those office chair moving robots, giant groups of people in the stands, autonomous function that runs better than your teleop, complicated pit setups, or even just having pins. Theres a whole lot of cool things in robotics that took years of development, struggle, and practice to get right. The quicker you can get into that, the more fun it will seem. Start with the small things, creating a team identity and developing a proper scouting network. You’ll see at competition that each team feels unique, every team has a different vibe that it gives off, different colours, different clothing, and so on.
Now I’m not saying for you to try and dive right into all of that, most times it ends badly and you will waste a ton of time and more importantly money. However don’t get too comfortable using the kitbot year after year. You have to push your boundaries or you wont grow. The main point isnt really to be the best team in the world, its to have fun and learn while doing so. Robotics is so much fun and has taught me more than some of my actual high school courses. I really do hope this helps out some new teams so that more kids can see how much fun robotics really can be. If you have any questions, comments, or additions please share. All the best this year!