This might be a topic for its own thread, but first - we collect interest in July/August, registration in September/October, so the 172 for this season is our locked-in, you joined & did all the steps, registration. We probably had about 230 total folks interested (something as easy as putting your email in during the club fair, then you attend the info sessions, figure out the commitment & whether it’s for you.) - so, 50-60 students looked at what we do and said ‘nah, no thanks, I won’t commit’ - and that’s okay.
Our team activites are year-round. Throughout the fall, we have weekly workshops that teach the basics, including a mini-build / capstone project, then spring semester is, predictably enough, kickoff and build/competition season. Leaders are trained not only to teach the FIRST basics, but to help make the team a welcoming, exciting, fun place to hang out - most folks are motivated to stay on.
I obviously don’t have good full-year data for this season since the year isn’t over yet, but let’s look at 2019-20 as an example of student engagement - with our team, anyone can join & register, but in order to travel you need to meet certain requirements for participation & meaningful work - so let’s call that an ‘active’ student, for the sake of easy numbers. 114 total students, only 12 of those came to meetings/build/committees so little that they weren’t eligible for travel, and although we didn’t end up having a competition season - only four students chose not to re-register for the team the next year, 16 seniors graduated… so 94 stayed on for 2020-21.
For 2020-21, we were all-virtual, so no build but we had 125 students, graduated 25, 6 chose not to come back, leaving, apparently, the magic number of 94 turning over into the this season.
Mid-season for 2022, out of our 172 team members, 144 of them are travel-eligible (i.e. active enough on the team to come to competitions if they want to, though not all do - and, come to think of it as I’m writing, there are some folks whose hours I need to adjust because quarantine this year doesn’t count against them, for obvious reasons - so probably closer to, if not over, 150.)
This is pretty ‘normal’ for us, but I’m not sure I have any sort of secret sauce other than ‘we keep things moving all year round and that helps people not trail off’. We’re very up front with the summer & early fall recruitment that the team is a big commitment, so rather than have folks trail off after registering, they tend to trail off before.