Joining
What does it take to be part of the team?
Open Season
Our open season for accepting new students is June through September each year. If we haven’t seen a student and a family adult by September, the student will not be joining our team until the following season. We encourage students and their families to be part of our team during the summer so they can experience what being on our team is like, and decide whether our team is a good fit for them.
Age Requirements
The age requirements for being part of a FIRST Robotics Competition team, such as Roaring Robotics, is 13 through 18. In general, students entering or in 8th through 12th grades can join our team during open season. If a student is close, talk to us.
Residency Requirements
Residency requirements? What are those? Unlike many area robotics teams, we are not associated with a school or a school district. As such, we do not have residency requirements. For most families, the main issue is whether our Downers Grove build facility and meeting location is close enough to make the commute on a regular basis.
Show Up
We ask that a parent and a family adult along with a student to visit us before registering. Why? We want students and their families to understand what being part of our team entails before making a season commitment.
Note that we will not start the registration process until we’ve seen the student and a family adult.
Paperwork and other Administriva
As always, there’s paperwork. Don’t stress over it, though. We can walk you through it when you come to a meeting. Here are the things that we’ll have a parent (or an adult student) complete to register a student on our team:
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Online team registration - This provides us with basic information about your student and family, primarily for contact information.
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FIRST registration - This is for the official registration with the FIRST organization.
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Website registration - This will enable team members and their parents to access team information on our website.
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BAND registration - We use BAND for day-to-day communications. As such, both students and their parents need to be registered on BAND so that they can be updated on meetings and events.
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Team Wear - During the fall (typically October), we will have a period where families can order team wear for their students. The cost of team wear is bit over a $100 or so for a full set, most of which is good for future seasons. For those families who may not be able to afford the team wear, we will provide discount codes allowing families to acquire team wear at reduced or no cost.
One of our students is working on a prototype for a robot mechanism.