My school has limited resources for teams but lots of people who want to join

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

Hi everyone. I help run the robotics team at my school. This year, we had a large amount of people who wanted to join and only had resources for 5 teams. What ended up happening was that we put 10 people on each team, and the people who signed up earlier ended up on a team. What this led to was people who were on the teams had other commitments, and were gone most of the season. It wasted spots on teams and stopped others from having the opportunity since it was too late in the season.

This next school year, I would not like this to happen. I want the people on the teams to commit to this club, as lets be honest, it’s not an easy club/team. We have resources(currently) for 4 teams. Obviously we cannot do “tryouts” like sports teams, as we will have freshman and other newcomers. I need advice on how I should go about making teams next year. I would have people choose their own teams, but friends will choose their friends, and won’t get anything done(seen it from past experience), and I would like to balance the teams so we don’t have too many builders/programmers on one team. I’ve been thinking about solutions for a while but haven’t come up with anything. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, or even just how your school/organization did it.

Thanks in advance.

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#2

I would recommend running fundraisers to see if you can get more parts or other materials. Another thing you might do, is put a 5 dollar entry fee for joint the club. People are more likely to come if they are financially committed. You could also get 100 plus dollars from a small fee that could be used to maybe register another team and/or buy more parts.

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#3

Thanks for the idea! I’ll talk to the club sponsor to see if our school allows that.

#4

Just wondering, why can’t you have more teams? Is it a limit on parts or the registration costs?

#5

Limited parts and we only have four v5 brains. Hopefully we can get some more funding next year.

#6

I would also highly recommend limiting teams to 6 people max. I find 2 as not enough to get everything done. 3 is good number but sometimes short on time. 4 has some people without a job sometimes.

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#7

I understand not being able to have tryouts but a simple application process shouldn’t be too bad. Since you have a limited number of slots available, let that be known and have the interested students submit applications.
There’s nothing exclusionary about applications that would differentiate this from any other extracurricular selection process.

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#8

You could hold tryouts asking about the general knowledge for robotics, or have a more specialized tryout and have a varsity and junior varsity team.

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#9

Or one thing that he/she could do is have a robotics class that teaches all of the new members the basics without having them compete. Once they “graduate” out of that class then they can start competing.

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#10

That’s a good idea but it would require a lot of extra work on their part. In theory, it would be great, but it would reduce their already small budget by requiring extra instruction (I’m assuming from the mentor or facilitator). Just kinda inefficient given the resources the OP has.

#11

We do have a robotics class, but it is the first year it has been up and most people took it for the extra credits they needed, not because they wanted to compete. I do like the idea though, I might talk to the teacher of the class.

1 Like
#12

Just give everyone who wants to join one of those click pens, and only let in the people who take apart the pens.

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#13

HA that just might work!

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#14

They could roll up little acceptance letters inside the pens.

#15

FTFY

Awesome idea, btw!

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#16

but don’t have them “try out” while being able to freely communicate or they’ll all just kinda copy each other, give them a fake paper-and-pen exam with dividers on some robot basics with your commitment requirements and give them a lot of extra time to fiddle with the pens

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