I was just wondering what teams do for fun once build and competition season are over. My team recently finished competition season and we are planning to have some sort of gathering.
We have a meeting discussing what we did well this year and what we need to improve for next year.
We do things the the community, visit schools to raise awareness for the upcoming freshman, do parades to demonstrate to the community what we are all about, etc. I think we plan to go visit other high schools in our area to show them FIRST. During the summer, we have some fun. We have a BBQ to celebrate every year and we hang out with a team that we are good friends with. When school starts, our season starts.
I think our coach said he wanted to experiment with swerve drive modules since we have never tried to make a swerve drive chassis, so the chassis team may do that. Not sure yet.
LAN party every once in a while for fun, we would like to build some drivetrains as well.
During the build season we went Skating and had a movie night. The night before the Va Regionals we played laser tag!
We haven’t figured out what to do for next year yet.
Write software for fun
Off seasons are by far the best off season activity for a team. 
That’s a given though. 
Softball! We have weekly softball games! And we do demos and have fun. We got to play with other teams this year which was fun (a one-day play-date thing with the robots). Our students are responsible for a Mentor VEX Challenge (Kids make the game) and spend a lot of time on that.
And sleep. My favorite part about the off season is that there is more sleep everyonce in a while.
Team RUSH, in the summer, hosts the annual “RUSH Regatta” in which small groups of our team members (and whomever else) build boats out of cardboard, duck tape, glue, and paint. It’s really cool. It allows us to get to know the rookies on the team and teach them some design + manufacturing concepts way before the build season starts. I’m gonna need clarification on this, but I think we’re gonna let other teams compete. Let me know if you’re interested (We’re in Clarkston, Michigan, so… keep in mind you need to transport it here)
We have “team bonding” every now and then. Basically we hang out somewhere, usually downtown, and play games/go out to dinner somewhere. There are a lot of variations; we’ve squeezed into someone’s house and watched a movie, etc.
That’s separate from our actual off season meetings though. Those are usually for debrief, administrative fluff for next year, cleaning the room, etc. We’re also currently lacking a demo bot, since our previous one (chair bolted to chassis) was disassembled due to liability issues, so we’re probably going to alter our Breakaway bot for that purpose. Also practice drivetrains, fooling around with camera, etc.
We build robotics T-shirt cannons
Off-Season…Hmmmmmm, what’s that?:yikes:
our team host an off season competiton at our school
During the summer, we might have minor meetings, and we try to make an appearance at a couple of summer camps.
During the fall, we plan to attend GRITS (off season event), build VRC, and host a VRC competition.
We debrief the season (what was good, what can be better, etc) and make a punchlist for anything we want to do for the off season competitions (work on autonomous, upgrade the ball magnet, what-have-you). We also examine leadership positions for the next year. The mentors have dinner together, and the whole team has a picnic towards the end of school. We participate in local community days, school, youth organization, corporate, and engineering expositions. We also do summer project(s): last year we did a pivot drivetrain study which led to our current semifinalist bot and Xerox Creativity Award. There’s also that whole relax, bond, and sleep thing too (not necessarily in that order). During the fall, we attend off-season events, train new students, and hold classes to teach the different skills needed during build season.
fun? off season?
we host our own off season event (Brunswick Eruption- Yay) and we attend just about everybody else’s off season competition to support them.
We also hold fund raiser events all year to raise our goal of $1000/month or more- and fund our travel for the next season
WC 
Usually, 816’s off-season consists of two off-seasons, Duel On The Delaware and Ramp Riot. We also tinker with whatever robot we’re competing with at the time, usually making minor modifications. We also play with different things like programming and some random side projects, and one year (2006) we even built a “new” robot for the off-season.
Personally, my off-season will probably consist of: PARC (maybe), Monty Madness, IRI, Duel On The Delaware, Ramp Riot, Brunswick Eruption, and some pre-season CAD with my Protege.
I’d suggest that any team in or around the NJ/PA/NYC/DE area check out at least two of these off-season events: PARC, Monty Madness, Duel On The Delaware, Ramp Riot, and Brunswick Eruption. Trust me, none of those events disappoint.
We (675) are about outreach in the community. Over the summer we usually make a few visits to the local power and implement museum for demonstrations, sell cakes at July 4 and Labor Day BBQs, and enter our robot as an exhibit at the fair. In the spring, as well as in the fall we invite our community to pasta feeds and awards dinners. We also hold an outreach day in the park where we demonstrate our robots and talk a lot about FIRST and our program. It’s always a lot of fun to be able to go out and do things in the community.