I am curious as to what teams are doing in the 7 months until Kickoff 2003? RVR(87) will be going to 2 competitons, have a Bar-B-Q, have some fundraisers, a banquet, and a Robotics Academy. I’d like to see the variety of activities the teams do.
*Originally posted by dixonij *
**I am curious as to what teams are doing in the 7 months until Kickoff 2003? RVR(87) will be going to 2 competitons, have a Bar-B-Q, have some fundraisers, a banquet, and a Robotics Academy. I’d like to see the variety of activities the teams do. **
Hmm… last year Team 237 did (in no particular order):
Mini Comps
Fundraising
Planning for next season
Hanging out going insane with nothing to do,
Volunteer at the Haunted Graveyard at Lake Compounce amusement park in CT, a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
Oktoberfest - display the robot and have little kids drive it and break some transmissions LOL
Manufacturing symposium - same as the Oktoberfest but grown up kids. lol
X-mas partys
Graduation parties
There has to be more I am missing but oh well!
We do a couple of off-season comps, plus an off-season league called OCCRA. It’s a local league in Oakland County, with about 30 teams and 5 competitions. It’s like a mini-FIRST, and every team builds a new robot for a new, unique game. The robots are also entirely student designed and built. It’s a great idea, and we have tons of fun doing it. If anyone likes this idea, there are some wonderful people here (Mike McIntyre and Mike Martus) who I’m sure could tell you a bit more about this.
Other than that, we do demos of our robots, raise money, and have parties and other “team bonding experiences.” We try our best to monopolize the lives of our team for the whole year, not just during the FIRST season 
OCCRA rocks! Even if our robot’s gate would never open, our arm fell off, and we forgot our cart for two of the competitions.
I sit arround alot. Sometimes I stare longingly at last year’s robot. Maybee I’ll drive her arround a bit… but it’s just not the same. I stay inside sometimes and watch the rain fall. Sometimes i’ll clean the machines in the shop, but why? they haven’t been used in months. I count the days untill the next kickoff. I cry myself to sleep.
Maybee one day I’ll get arround to calling a team meeting. But there’s never anything to discuss. Then my team gets mad at me for wasting thier time and they yell at me. They just don’t understand. I’m so lonely… so very lonely.
Some days I plan to leave the workshop but I really can’t find a good reason to. I’m still wearing the team uniform form the championships and I havn’t taken it off since. What’s the point? What’s the point of anything anymore?
I talk to my robot. she doesn’t say anything, but she understands me.
Robotics wise basically what we’re doing now is fund-raising and getting next years team ready to go. We’re also doing some community work with the robot at the junior schools (we gotta get the kids into FIRST at a young age…lol).
Me personally, I’ll be working at the Ontario Science Centre, getting sponsors for our robotics team for next year, sleeping, BBQ’s, pools, sleeping, beaches, baseball, golf, did I say sleeping? 
Wow, people are ding a lot in the off season. Our team is taking 4 months to sleep before we jump back into FIRST. Hope to see you all next year