We understand that middle schoolers cannot be on the drive team. But can they be either technician or photographer?
Middle schoolers can drive the robot.
âA STUDENT is a person who has not completed high-school, secondary school, or the comparable level as of
September 1 prior to Kickoffâ
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If the middle schooler has more knowledge of the robot than other students then by all means he should be the technician; however, I donât really see that happening that often. As for photographer, if you trust the middle schooler with expensive equipment then it should be fine, but still if there is a more experienced high schooler they should be in higher priority.
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Pretty sure their driver is still in middle school.
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Here are two older threads with many perspectives on the topic:
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My rookie year as an FRC coach our robot was built by 3x8th graders and a 9th grader. They definitely drove that robot. (And drove well!)
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Our new drivers were 8th graders at their first competition (IRI) this year.
Weâve had middle school human players before and had no issues
My alum team had middle schoolers on drive team constantly. The teamâs first human player was in 8th grade and did amazing. It all came down to numbers and knowledge (small school with limited transfer of knowledge)
We are so low on recruitment numbers at the moment that if we donât see a big signup at the open house in a couple weeks, I will be heading to the middle schools in our district to get any help we can.
In the absence of FTC at any of the middle schools and only 1 ROV team at 1 of 4 middle schools I think we could draw enough from each to really double or triple our current roster. It might not be the worst plan to give them extra time with the FRC team if they wanted to do robotics, but couldnât get on their own team because they donât have one.
Upside of middle schoolers? They canât drive themselves to meetings so their parents will be more likely to stick around and help out too. If any of those middle schoolers want to drive and pass the tryouts then we would have 0 issue. We would want to ensure the drive coach is a high schooler or adult only to make sure they are not taken advantage of by âover-zealousâ drive coaches on other teams. Doesnât matter who the middle schooler is. Standing your ground when you are that age against high schoolers and adults twice your size feels nearly impossible.
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Also 8732 - Trinity Forceâs driver which in 2023 was (I think) around 7th or 8th grade.
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I was in 8th grade last year and was my teamâs driver. Mainly since I had the most experience from being software lead. Also, I was backup driver in 7th grade. (We had a very small programing group and I was the only one who knew the controls well enough.) I was invited to the team that year to be learning programing and have a head start once our seniors graduated.
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Cannot? Or Should not?
The former is resolved by the game manual.
There is discussion to be had on the latter though - itâs more of a team/maturity/interactions while on the field question, which is forever and always a topic of debate here and elsewhere.
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Well the FIRST site says a student in FRC should be in a 9-12th grader. I would assume middle schoolers (unless they are going into 9th grade) should not be allowed. It also could be an unfair advantage for scouting in stands and generally makes a bigger team. This could be unfair to smaller teams at smaller schools. We have an FTC team but our middle schoolers are not well behaved
Start a Team | FIRST.
Section 6.2 of the 2025 manual
A DRIVE TEAM is a set of up to 5 people from the same FIRST Robotics Competition team responsible for team performance for a specific MATCH. There are 4 specific roles on a DRIVE TEAM which ALLIANCES can use to assist ROBOTS with REEFSCAPE, and no more than 1 member of the DRIVE TEAM may be a nonSTUDENT.
A STUDENT is a person who has not completed high-school, secondary school, or the comparable level as of September 1 prior to Kickoff.
There is not a minimum bound, just an upper bound. The grades on the website are a general age range and recommendation. The manual is what rulings are made from on the field.
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While yes I see your point. FRC has always been for the high schoolers. This can give an unfair advantage to other teams who have middle schoolers on them. Middle schoolers should be allowed to be in offseason events, not season events. There is a reason FIRST advertises to high schoolers. Middle schoolers have their own division for this reason. FRC and middle schoolers generally dont mix. Our team has experience with middle schoolers. They play on their chrome books, wont help be productive, come late, leave early, dont show up to practice. Another reason is we use discord and they are too young to join because they are under 13. Most sites require you to be 13 anyways. It just always seems like first doesnt intend for middle schoolers to be involved in FRC. I could be wrong because iâm not Dean Kamen or Chris Moore.
FTC is also available to high schoolers. Unless youâre in MI.
A newborn baby can legally drive a robot. There is no lower age restriction.
Your opinion is noted. But the facts are the middle schoolers can and do compete in FRC, successfully, sometimes even with the entire team being middle school. These are the facts.
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I donât have the bandwidth or free time like I used to so our FTC teams eventually collapsed during Covid and after the parent coaches kids moved on. In that case isnât it better for those students to do something STEAM related and join any robotics team that can take them?
As far as being unproductive with enough adult supervision and division of labor they can do lots of good work and in some cases perform better than their FRC counterparts. One of the teams made it to states their rookie season. Those students are now highschool aged and some have come and gone through FRC while some went onto other stuff in highschool. Iâd have taken any of them on the FRC team if theyâd have stuck around.
Edit:
Also applies to us. FTC is strictly middle school so we couldnât go down a league the other way either and do FTC with the high schoolers to save money, include the Middle Schoolers who would have had a team previously. So we bring them up with us. We havenât even officially started the middle school draft, but we have 1 or 2 younger siblings of alumni or current students who are on the team as of Kickoff.
Sidenote: any Michigan FTC team that goes on to worlds is then up against High School aged students from around the world in many cases. So itâs not really a league of their own in FTC anyways beyond the state level.
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