I am new to the robotics coaching world and was wanting to know the recommended amount of competitions that we should compete in. I don’t see my team going to state since we are all new to robotics, but the more practice we have the more prepared they would be for next year.
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I would plan it around the time frames and ambition. If your teams are ambitious and want to make large, complex, and upper edge robots, then try and plan for gaps above a month between competitions at least. However, if they want to dedicate a moderate amount of time for the joy of competing, rather than going to the end of the road, as you alluded to, then less time between competitions may be needed.
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I try to get every team to 3 events and our end of season Extravaganza (does not qualify for world). This means running 10 events with 20 teams. VIQ events are easy, if you are 2 hours away from Wilmington DE I’ll come help you run one.
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In our first year last season we went to 6 total tournaments, one of those being Elementary Regionals (which here in Texas is the same as qualifying for State).
Honestly, the tournaments are a TON of fun, though quite exhausting. Our team loved competing last year, so we’re going to try and go to 8-10 events this season, even going into the neighboring Texas Region for events there even though we can’t qualify for Regionals from those.
It’s definitely an incredible learning opportunity for newer teams, getting a chance to meet peers outside of their team, see the different robot designs in-person and to get caught up in the fun and excitement of competition. Because we’re a private team with only 1 robot, getting exposure to other teams and their designs as well as getting the kiddos to realize they’re part of a larger robotics community is invaluable!
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Ah, I feel an enormous statistical inevitability of the realist hat weighting on your perfectly reasonable expectations. 
While I must agree with you, please, keep putting your dreamer hat 
, when you enter the classroom m and tell your students that they could make it to states if they follow these easy steps and invest their time and dedication into it. 
Step 1: volunteer to help at the earliest competition in your area or just go there with your students as a spectators to see what to expect.
Step 2: talk to local coaches who have been doing this for years and ask if they have any senior students willing to come over and help your students get started - this helped our team a lot to be able to learn hands on.
Step 3: build something that could drive on the field as early as possible, experiment with it and don’t be afraid to rebuild. The more of those “build, teast, learn, rebuild” cycles you get the better are your chances to do well.
That really depends on your practice schedule and budget.
I would say you need about 20-30 hours of build and practice time between competitions.
I would aim for at least 3 competitions. One early to mid season to learn what it’s all about, another around December to try your first solid prototype and the last one close to the end of the season to give you best efforts of everything you learned during the season.
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