Question: As time went by did less people come to build after school? I thnk we started wtih about 40 people and at the end we had about 20. Do you know reasons people dropped out?
i think its just like that with every team, we started with about 35-40 members the first few weeks, then quickly dropped to 20, by the time building came around we had about 12 people that were always there, and a few others who came sometimes
yeah, definitely. At our first meeting, we had around 40 people in attendence. After that, we had a sudden drop and lost around 15 people. about 25 people ended up staying. This was kind of to our dismay, however, because many of the people who stayed just used this as an after school hangout and only about 15 people ended up being really involved IMO.
522 no matter what has a member problem. each year we start out with about 10 - 15 kids from the year before. we recruit about 20 more. we lose about 8 - 10 though due to graduation. all in all our max. amount of kids was like 35. the least was about 7 - 9. for the last 2 years this year included in that 2 at least 4 senior members stayed with the team after graduation.
I think that Cyber Blue only lost a few, if any. We did have quite a few who started coming less and less throughout the season though. A lot of it had to do with them playing sports and doing the school plays, but they still showed up periodically.
Three people working 36 hours straight by the end.
We started with about 35, then dropped to officially, like 25 i think. But we only had like, maybe 10 that did anything.
I think my team has about 22 returning “members” and about 1/2 of those returning people are seniors…here in the first week of September we will have our call-out meetings and i can almost 100% guarantee there will be quite a few more people there, but by the time January rolls around about 75% of those people arent around anymore…it happens like that every year…
In 2001 we had 60 people show up for our first few meetings. That number quickly dropeed to about 40 and by the time the build rolled around we were down to about 35. In 2002, we started out with 38 people and ended with 29. Of those 29, 15 will be returning and I know of 6 people who are going to join. I’m guessing, that, for 2003 we will have about 25 people - In my eyes, 20-25 people is the perfect number to have… as long as they all do something constructive with their time! 
- Katie
We started with like 25 students and most stayed because robotics is a class at our school. We lost a couple people along the way some how but kept almost everybody in the end. There were unofficial meetings when it was just a few of us like right before the Chatsworth pre-ship comp. Straight work 24hrs, competition for 6 hours, and more work for 10 more hours after the comp. Totaling 40 hrs of awakeness for me. Our main engineer and one other student besides myself went through the whole first 24 hr period.
ummm… we have about 80 people sign up and when we anounce our 1st meeting date about 40 come to the meeting then after they find out it isn’t a free trip to florida about 30 start comming. after work starts we get about 20 left and that is what we compete at strength wise
The above senerios of students starting out but not completing the task, and the few who do most of the work. This is all to common.
Chief Delphi operates as a club in the fall with manadatory meetings or events. Team members are required to participate or they do not make the actual team in late December. This is a time when the coaches evaluate the students.
We start with a team that is about 30 and usually end up with 24 or so, the amount has varied from year to year and depends on what our budget can support.
All students fill out an application and go through an interview process that makes sure we get students that are interested and have the time for the activitiies.
Second semester all team members MUST be in a class called FIRST. This class is last hour of the day so that the students can stay a few hours after school as needed. This really helps with the work load and shares the effort. If students drop off in participation they are warned and possibily dropped from the team. Add to this the academic grade requirements and we usually have a very stable group of students.
We spend many hours on team building with the engineers and teachers. This gets the students to feel comfortable and to buy into the program.
We started last fall with about 25 members. By Kickoff, we were down to about 20. By the time we went to Nationals, though, we only had 13 members. Of those, probably 6 or 8 were really dedicated, and the other 5 came often, but not nearly as much as the first group.
Team 100 is always small. We have about 25-30 people attend regionals, but only about 6-7 people are seriously involved and come to all build periods. I think many people are turned off by the idea of working 16 hour days for the last week, and 6-10 hour days for the weeks before that.