Forming a Team

FIRST is fun, challenging and educational. It is also a great exercise in teamwork. Therefore, you would think that every school would have at least one team entered in the competition. However, it's not quite as easy as it sounds to form a team. One of the first challenges of FIRST is getting your act together enough to create a new team.

To start a team, you need a group of interested students in your high school. There's no limit on team size and no "recommended" team size, but a team needs a good mix of skills. With a robot there are mechanical aspects, electrical aspects, computer aspects, creativity aspects and more. A good team needs to cover all of these areas.

A view of the pit area, where teams ready their robots for the competition

The next step is to find adults who are willing to help. There needs to be one or more faculty advisers, as well as mentors and volunteers from the community. It is highly unlikely that a group of students could assemble a complete working robot from scratch in six weeks without the help of engineers from several disciplines.

FIRST Pointer FIRST recommends that a new team contact an existing local team to make the start-up process easier. There's a lot you can learn from the experience of an existing team.

Then there is the cash problem; FIRST is expensive. To enter and compete in the regional event, there is a $5,000 entry fee. A typical team has an annual budget of between $15,000 and $30,000 [ref], depending on whether the team goes to the national competition or not. The team has to raise all of that money from local sponsors or through grants, and it's not easy -- but it can certainly be done.

Despite these hurdles, nearly 1,000 teams competed in the 2004 FIRST competition.