“No. I used to be a FIRST Robotics mentor....”
My older son co-founded Team 975 in Midlothian, VA. I was a mentor for 5 years and my younger son was on the team as well. You are right about the hundreds of hours.
The other co-founder of the team got one of the FIRST scholarships to VCU engineering school and she graduated Summa Cum Laude. The “recruiter lady” at VCU engineering was also the coordinator of the FIRST regional competition, and knew us. She just sorta happened to find my son a 4-year ALCOA scholarship to engineering school.
It would be interesting to know the back story on these kids, especially the two who headed north.
Ours was team 3498 from Aberdeen, MD.
Capitol Technology University is a big sponsor our way and that’s where he ended up in aerospace engineering.
Our first two years we qualified for World’s which made the season even longer. I missed my 25th and 26th wedding anniversaries for robot. All worth it because of the skills learned and scholarships.