What is the maximum number of veteran team members that can be on a rookie team? We are currently part of a school team, but it has really been going downhill as of late (they fired our entire coaching staff so that they could hire someone who works for the school even though he knows nothing about robotics, plus we lose money and can’t freely buy things that we need without going through a review process, and they make our members pay the school $75 to be on the team). We want to separate from the school, but they won’t let us now that none of our original coaches are left so the only one that we have works for them. A group of us want to leave and start our own team next year with a few of us from the team, some new kids, and one of our old mentors as our coach. I thought I remembered hearing that a rookie team has to have 5 or fewer veteran remembers, but we couldn’t find the actual rule online. Thanks!!
Thank you so much!! I don’t know why we couldn’t find that before, haha.
Yes, rule is five or fewer members. I was a part of a team that did basically what you are describing in 2015, with exactly 5. Note that you can still form a new team with a new number if you have more than 5 returning students, you just won’t be considered a rookie team for the purposes of things like rookie awards and grants.
However, FIRST can retroactively assign you a number from your rookie year if you don’t sign up as a rookie, if you want to be clear that you’re an old team in a different form.