Team Activities and Costs

What a team does each season

  • A team forms when enough interested students come together along with two adult coaches (volunteers, usually from parents/guardians of students on the team).  The Anacortes Robotics Booster Club helps teams form by collecting information (pre-registration) and coordinating amongst the interested participants.
  • Team meetings are held at least twice per week, for at least 2 1/2 hours at a time (coaches adjust the schedule as needed)
    • Team can start meeting as early as August, and the first (Qualifying) tournament is in December; teams that advance continue to meet weekly to improve and practice
    • Meetings are often held at Anacortes School District facilities, but can be held anywhere parents agree
  • Teams meet with experts and go on “field trips” organized by team parents and coaches to help explore the challenge topic using community experts and other resources
  •  Team members prepare to compete in four areas:
    •  Core Values – demonstrate knowledge and practice of the FIRST Core Values
    • Innovation Project – show the ability to do fundamental research to understand a problem, apply creative evidence-based scientific thinking to develop a solution to the problem, and present the solution in an informative/entertaining way
    • Robot Design/Build – prepare a custom-designed and programmed robot to autonomously perform pre-determined tasks called missions
    • Robot Game – operate the robot in timed matches where points are awarded for successful completion of the tasks
  • Teams compete at day-long Tournaments
    • Every team competes in a Qualifying Tournament
    • Teams with well-rounded competitive performances move up the Tournament ladder

What you (parents) pay each season

ARBC collects a per-student team “startup contribution” each season on behalf of each sponsored team; the amount is shown on the “Pre-registration” page under “ARBC season details.”  This contribution is not due until a student becomes a team member.  Since this money is spent to launch a team, it is not refundable even if a student stops participating before the end of the season.  Our community (through ARBC) supplies materials, volunteer labor, and obtains grants (where possible) to reduce team expenses.

If your student’s team is a highly competitive team that creates their own uniforms, develops expensive props, or otherwise develops expenses beyond the basic ARBC sponsorship, then you may pay more than the initial startup contribution.

Team expenses each season

The cost to operate an FLL Challenge team for a season starts with team registration fees, acquiring LEGO robotics kits, and paying tournament fees.  A team might spend a bare minimum to register, acquire 1 set of basic equipment, and enter the tournaments.  More competitive teams have multiple robot kits, team uniforms (t-shirts at a minimum), create costumes, add props and models, etc.  ARBC’s team sponsorship gives teams a good start, but competitive teams will incur expenses that must be borne by the team through fundraising or additional parental contributions.

The basic cost items are:

  • Team registration with the national FIRST organization
  •  Seasonal Challenge Set (game mat, mission models, Engineering Notebooks)
  • One or more LEGO  robot kits (ARBC loans one kit for every three students to each team)
  • Team uniforms (FIRST does not require a uniform – ARBC provides t-shirts to build a basic team identity, some teams develop custom uniforms at their own expense)
  • Team tournament registration through the state-wide FIRST Washington organization

A bare-bones “first season” could cost as little as $1,500; a basic medium-sized team’s first season costs around $2,000.  An established team’s basic operating costs can be as low as $1000/year in succeeding years because the robot kits are reusable (with lost/damaged parts replaced), but may be higher for established competitive teams with bigger ideas.