SO, I am Aaron Smothers From team 2500 Herobotics and this is my senior year I am going to grad rapids for college (Major… Engineering Baby!) Anyway another senior and my best friend ashley (short girl with red hair) are going to try to start a FIRST team at a local highschool there and we need any feedback you can give us … HELP!
I’ll give you some help. Read this thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47004 and follow the advice given.
You beat me to it eric… 
Why don’t you just help any of the great teams around Grand Rapids? That way you can concentrate on school and help when you can.
We are a team from grand rapids, i assume you mean Michigan, Whereas i think we are looking fine with team Mentors, we may be able to help you find a team that is looking for some help.
Could we get more details, where are you going to college? (Grand Valley?) What do you think you will have in terms of time restraints? (Jobs?)
Ill try to help you out and point you in the right direction.
I mean grad rapid Minneasota! its a really rural area with not much for teens to do!
Wow i was going to say there are a lot of teams here in Grand Rapids Michigan, so that would be easy, but i’ve got now clue as to Minnesota, good luck.
I have allot of support so i am going to take my time and get it right i see i need to get in contact with allot of people and that thread they posted gave me allot to think about. I am committed to doing this and college and i do have the work ethic so i just need allot of helping hand people wise and and team from around the country wise
Team 3036 from Deer River appears to be about 20 minutes from Grand Rapids (city to city).
I would recommend that you look into mentoring them for at least a year before you consider starting a team unless you have a group of adult (non-college) mentors involved and support from a high school in the area lined up already. Starting a team is a lot of hard work and doing it during your freshman year of college makes it much harder.
When i used to be involved in First there was aproject/dvd by team 341 called Team in a box, not sure if they are still doing it (i’m very out of touch :P)
I would strongly recommend a year off from a team directly. Start the school year off right. If you want to stay involved in FIRST, try helping out a regional planning committee or volunteering at events.
If you are interested in starting a team, work with the school and take some students (non seniors) to an event and have them get inpsired for the year after that. This will also help them understand the importance of fund raising…
Good luck, but please don’t underestimate the time commitment for leading a team. Also it is good to take a year to talk with other teams and understand how they are run, and how you want to run your team. Remember there are many right ways to run a team. One of the most important and most overlooked items is that the mentors agree on how they are going to run the team.
wow you guys have given me allot to think about and i thank you for that… i have allot of thinking to do and you all have great ideas