Can anyone join or are their limitations? For example, is there a tryout or a GPA requirement? Do you limit how many people can join?
Also do you let anyone go to the regionals and/or Championship or do they have to qualify? If so, how do they qualify?
Our team has a recruiting process, but not an application process. We pretty much take any student who wants to join, as long as they are a student of Kokomo High School or a son/daughter of a Delphi employee who is an active TechnoKat coach.
Currently, we don’t have a minimum GPA to be on the team… but we have requirements for a student to be active on the team (per school rules).
Also… we have some fairly tough requirements for students when it comes to competition travel. If a student gets any C- or below in any of their classes, then they can’t travel to a competition. This made a few students not attend the Championships and a few more didn’t get the grades to go to Regionals.
The main reason for this is because the students are taking time away from school to attend these FIRST competitions. For many of them, these requirements are the first ones that they are dealing with and they are beginning to learn good study habits. For the most part, the students have buckled down and gotten better grades in order to meet these requirements.
Also, there are a few cases where students don’t make grades all year and can’t attend any of the competitions. While it’s tough for these students to not attend a competition, they are still on the team and can attend work sessions and meetings.
We also have study tables which help the kids somewhat… we need to expand this for next year and do more inter-team tutoring, I think.
Grades are important to our team. We have tended to attract all kinds of students, not just the “A” students. We REALLY drive home that grades are important and that the good study habits that these students are forming now are excellent practice for their post-secondary education.
Andy B.
Members who have not previously been on the team have to fill out an application and then it is reviewd by the officers to see if their membership is approved.
For Regionals, everyone gets to go, but for the Championship only the people that we think we are going to need go, like drivers, pit crew, etc… We took 13 out of the 35 students on our teams to Florida this year.
considering we are hurting for kids right now there is not really any requirement to join the team…except next year the middle school are coming up and joing so we wont be next year…hopefully in the near future there will be enough kids that want to join that there has to be an applcation process…not now though…lets just get kids period first, then work on how big or small we want the team
to go to the trips you have to be consistent at the meetings, showing up just isnt enough…you have to contribute a little bit…te saturday work sessions are the most important…we need kids to step-up to the plate…and you have to pay your way…you have to participate in the fundraising efforts and be a positive influence to others…u have to be flexible and respectful…so theres not one thing that has to be done…it is a culmination of many things…
i would love to here from teams like the wildstangs and MOE that prolly have no problem recruiting people…MOE has like 600,000 kids…how do u manage this many people? How do you recruit snough adult support to manage the kids when you go to events like nats…because i know my team in the past has had problems getting teacher support…the same 2 teachers for the past three years and no1 that is willing to step…they offer support and that is a help but we need teachers that can be there for the afterschool meetings more that Mr D and Ms. Hale(dont get me wrong they are gret people and the program needs them we just need more teacher support)…the engineers in the community have caught on and we have picked up a lot of support from them bu when they have a full-time job to do to support a family its kinda hard to make a 3 or even 5 o’clock meeting…sorry for the incoherent(sp) rambling
Anyone can join our robotics team but only 15-20 actually do anything. Anyone who has attended one work meeting can go to regionals but only the most active Seniors and Juniors get to go to Nats. Sometimes we will let other students go like two freshmen got to go to Nats this year.
Recruiting is handled mostly by the teachers and students, so my explination may not be 100% accurate. The primary way we get students is obviously word of mouth; students currently on the team get their friends to join. This year we got a lot of freshmen to join because of their involvement with a FLL team. Our students also get on the school announcements to talk about FIRST and set up a table during the student orginization fiar (or whatever they call it). We have an advantage over many teams because we get students from 2 schools.
We take anyone who is a student at either of the two high schools or is a son/daughter of an engineer or teacher on the team. We don’t have any grade requirements because we feel it is important to get everyone involved, not only the top students at the school. We don’t have a size limit either; each year ~60 students join the team first semester and ~40 stay with the team until the end. We don’t put artifical caps on these numbers, it just turns out that way.
The closest we come to a requirement is that students must enroll in and do well in our class for the entire year. First semester we meet weekly to introduce basic topics to the new students and advanced topics to the returning students. Second sememster we meet weekly to review the past week’s progress for each sub-team, plus any meetings required for each sub-team to complete their tasks. Attendence and participation are required for each student to get a passing grade.
We usually attend 3 competitions and the travel requirements are different for each one.
For the local Motorola Midwest Regional we allow and encourage all active members of the team to attend and to bring their families. I think we had upwards of 100 people in our cheering section.
For the long distance regional we only take a small group of students, just enough to make the team function. We take the best students at each task: drive team, pit crew, scouting & strategy, video, and yearbook. They are chosen by the mentors as the students who participated the most and are the best to handle the required tasks. That turned out to be ~16 students this year. We view the regional travel team as the people required for us to have a successful competition.
For the Championship we take all of the students who put forth enough of an effort during the season to deserve to go. It’s a very subjective requirement. We took ~30 students to FL this year. We view the travel team for Nationals as the people who participated enough to deserve the reward of going to the competition. We take students who may not have a role at the competition, but who worked hard during the previous 4 months on other tasks (web team, fundraising, yearbook, video, chairmans, etc).
Now to answer purplehaze’s questions. We honestly don’t have a problem recruiting enough adults to help out. This year we had ~30 adults on the team consisting of engineers, teachers, & parents. We had an amazing turnout of engineers just out of school, and it sounds like they all want to get even more involved next year (the trick is to get engineers hooked when we’re young and have free time :)). We were also forutunate to have 4 teachers who were willing to open the school for meetings & to act as chaperones when we traveled.
I hope this answered your questions. If you have any more just ask.
Mike
Well, we actually don’t have 600,000 kids… it’s more along the lines of 35 
And, although we are made up of 8 different high schools, we have no active teachers on the team, only DuPont engineers and parents. This works because we meet at a DuPont site, so half of the engineers are already where we meet without having to commute, and the rest aren’t THAT far away, except for 1-2 exceptions.
Back to the original post, however ,we don’t have an application process. Because we show assemblies and wear our jerseys in school, kids know who’s on the team and who to talk to if they’re interested in joining… most of our recruiting is word-of-mouth (which is how I joined). And as far as who can join… we’ve never really turned anyone down, although we’re coming close because we don’t want more than 35 students on the team. If you come, do what is asked, and don’t mess around, you’re on the team. Most people who don’t feel like coming any more just stop; that’s how we filter out the uninterested . Hope that was interesting.
Our team requires applications, references and an interview to be considered for membership. We keep our team at around 10 high school kids so we want kids that are willing to work, learn and most of all enjoy this experience. We strive to have no fluff on our team that is only around for the trips and we feel that the very small team works best for us and our partnership with university. We want the kids who really want to do this and can be committed, and if we find more than 10 we are more than willing to expand the team (but so far we haven’t had to). We’ve also had a large team (70 people) and it just wasn’t the way we wanted our group to be. So to each their own, and well stick with our tiny team 
Ashley
team 234 is actually in the process of doing the applications and interviews now. we just started the application and interview thing last year when we decided we were getting too many to handle and keep busy. For the eighth graders of this year there will be an application process and then i think that there will be a “freshman” team that is going to do the Cheif Delphi Invitational in the fall. last year our team had about 31 students to start with and ended with about 25. i think the engineers and teachers are going to only accept about 20 kids this year but i might be wrong.
There’s a thing in the brazilian team that’s different from all other teams: the six weeks happen during our summer vacations.
That’s why only very interested sudents stay for the build season, so we don’t have to do any selection. Anyone may join.
We had 12 students in 2000, 9 in 2001 and about 21 in 2002. This year for the first time some students didn’t attend the competitions because of lack of money.
I would like to know, HOW DO YOU PEOPLE ON MOE LOOK LIKE YOU HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE? If most of the people in the stands are parents then you deserve any Team Spirit award you can get.