Team members

So I’m new to the whole FIRST thing. My mom coaches FLL, VEX, and FTC but we just started a FIRST team. I wanted to know what the lowest and highest number of team members you can have on a team.

Lowest your going to want at least 3, thats how many people you need on the field. As for max there is no max number of students, just as long as they all have something to do.

Thanks a lot! That clears a lot up for me. :slight_smile:

There are FIRST teams that have had as many as 130 members.
The high number is really up to you but as was said before you need three to make a drives team (there was a FIRST team comprised of one student. Don’t do that).

Actually no it is not 3 people on the field it is four: driver, operator, coach and human player, but other than that there is no limit on the amount you want to have on the team.

You don’t have to have a coach, so the min you want is 3 Driver, Operator, Human Player

true but it is always good to have one

Yes but your coach can be a mentor I was talking about students

Good point, but on our team a veteran member is the coach

Okay so you HAVE to have at least 3 team members? At this point my team only has 2 team members. (May have another one soon)

You technically don’t have to have 3 members. If you only have 2, then its possible to “borrow” a third person. However i would definitely advise getting a third team member.

The minimum number you have to have is 1 high school student so you have somebody to actually build and drive the robot. But more than 1 is generally a good thing

FLL has a maximum of 10 members per team. FRC and FTC do not have maximums.

Every team must have at least 1 student member, or no one will be able to drive the robot. But you’ll probably want more.

during my team’s rookie year they started with around 40 kids. But we split from another district team and also has an experienced lead mentor. But we always start out with more than 100 students each year. By the time build season comes around- we break the team into Varsity and JV- Varsity has around 50 members. This allows the team to be more efficient. But your problem is not having enough members. Contact your local businesses and ask if they would like to sponsor a team- this way you can pick up mentors too. And if you don’t have enough students, try recruiting more students through school announcements and contacting students in physics, woodshop/metalshop, and computer programming: anything robotics related. It seems like you got off to a late start- feel free to contact me for additional help!

The only problem with recruting people from my school is they already have a team. We just started a team and all my friends from school are on that team. We may have another team member if he actually wants to join.

Fixed that for you. No rule about who builds the robot.

Better get recruiting…

…but I really wonder why, when your school already has a team, you started another. If it’s sensitive, you don’t need to post it; I’m just curious.

I forget who but there is a school with 3 teams, who all build the same robot(just 3 times as many parts). Maybe instead of seeing who can build a better robot you should join forces so you have twice the chance of succeeding.

Where is your team? Your location only gives (what I assume is) the city. Can you update with your state and/or country?

Team 4409 is registered with FIRST as being in Niles, Michigan. I think the school with an already-existing team the OP is referring to might be Lake Michigan College, not a high school.

We are a homeschool team and my mom got a grant for a team so we made a new one. We are building at LMC.