First Robotics Competition (FRC) Team Records

This is a collection of random statistics and facts about the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) that might be useful in team marketing presentations, elevator speeches, etc. Excel versions of a variety of takes on FRC historical data have been published for people to pursue their own interests. You are encouraged to take and use this information as you need. Please use the spreadsheets, modify them, combine them, add more data and produce your own interesting factoids.

Over the years we and others have tracked a variety of data on team registration, growth, retention of older teams, recruitment of rookies, etc. Research and correlation of data sources is still ongoing as new information is uncovered.

FRC Team Growth

FRC Team Growth Trends
This data was derived from team competition lists and the FIRST Team Database. These lists do not necessarily follow FIRST's criteria for continuing teams, as that's hard to determine without political insight that isn't documented in the data we have available to us. In these charts team number changes are tracked by the primary educational base (school, 4H, Girl/Boy Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs, home school, etc.), We choose to categorize a team as new when a particular school plays FRC for the first time, and this rule has been applied from the first unnumbered teams through to the present. FIRST has changed it's definition of what a rookie is over the year's, and has changed team numbers from year-to-year for rationals of their own. We tried to pick one standard that can be applied consistently across the years for discussion purposes. In the end such arbitary decisions affect only a small percentage of teams, so we just wanted a rule that could be applied using only team lists as input.

• FRC Team Growth Summary (, 57 KB)
  Just source numbers that generate the chart above.
• Yearly FRC Team Rosters & Summary (, 2.6 MB)
• FRC Team Year-to-Year Comparison (, 3.5 MB) This is a year-to-year comparison of team lists for every year used to identify individual resurrected teams, returning teams and lost teams. It has some odd worksheets summarizing subsets of data depending on what whimsy struck us:

FRC Team Retention

FRC Team Retention
To the left is a table with # of rookies for each year and retention rates for those teams in subsequent years. The row is the year you're looking at (i.e. the row 2006 refers to the 2006 season). Then each column is the number of teams (out of the original # of teams) that participated in that season. So for row 2006, column 2000: then 271 of the 372 teams from the 2000 season also participated in the 2006 season for a retention rate of 72.849%. Note: the list of # of rookie teams is based off registration -- not whether they participated in an event or not, and this data is taken purely from the public FIRST database records of teams, so the early pre-1998 data is a little sparse.

To the right is a simpler chart showing overall team retention year-to-year. The numbers include continuing teams as well as teams that return after a hiatus of a year or more.

FRC Team Daily Registration Trends

FRC Team Daily Registration Trends
Plot of FRC team registration day-by-day from Registration opening around October 2 to closing about December 3 (and then on through the events), for the years 2005 through 2009 with the final totals for the years back to 1992 thrown in for reference.
We've noticed that registration seems to peak actually a week or so AFTER registration formally closes each year. Then that peak dwindles off as teams are not able to raise the funding, find the mentors, administration/teacher support flounders, facilities are unavailable, students aren't recruited, or local politics aren't conducive.
In the later real detailed plots you can see the flat weekends pretty distinctly, especially the three day Thanksgiving holiday where no one registers.
Open Registration Year-to-Year Comparison (, 132 KB)

Team Longevity

FRC Team Longevity Trends
At the very beginning in 1992, the first year of FIRST, no team had ever played before, so they all started with zero years of experience. As the years passed, teams came and went, a few have been around since that early beginning, others left and returned, and every year we get a great influx of rookie teams, again having zero experience. This chart shows how the average team longevity has climbed slowly from zero back in 1992 to an average 3.9 years of experience per team today. Of course, between seasons, before new rookies signup in the Fall, you can add another year of experience to everyone. :)

FRC Veterans
Another way to look at this is to tally the teams vs. years of experience.

All FRC Teams Past & Present

We've compiled a list of every FRC team that ever was - teams that are no more, teams that have around since the beginning, teams that started this season, teams who last played in 1992, including unnumbered teams from those pre-team number days. Weren't you ever curious just how many teams there really have been? What with all the team numbers FIRST has skipped and never assigned to anybody it can be really hard to tell. You might be surprised at the sponsors and schools that first started your own team.

One caution, as part of the history we've included the ORIGINAL team names NOT the present day names in this list.
All FRC Teams That Ever Were (, 3.5 MB)
As of 2009 there have been 2774 unique teams, including 19% (~534) who have morphing team identities - number changes, splits, mergers, siblings. With 1677 active teams in 2009, that means about a third of FRC teams have dropped out and not returned over the 18 years that have passed since the beginning of FRC in 1992. Luckily, many of those lost teams have just moved to FIRST Tech Challenge or another competition such as Battlebots IQ, so they haven't necessarily been lost to the inspiration of engineering.

This spreadsheet tracks down those early unnumbered teams to see if that school was ever assigned a number (in at least one case 14 years later), and identifies the duplicate team numbers (maybe 200) assigned to the same school, watches as teams have split and combined over the years.
This is a cut at identifying every team, as well as, duplicate team numbers based on school and will get more going over as time and interest demands. Some teams started as multiple schools then split apart with only one of the teams retaining ownership of the original team number, several teams have stopped and started several times through the years and ended up being represented by three or four different numbers, some team numbers changed from one year to the next (in one school's case it happened twice). A column by each team identifies related team numbers. These related numbers may be other numbers a team has gone by over the year's, or it may be that they split off from that referenced team or the referenced team split off from them, etc. See the "Notes" tab for a definition of the color coding use to identify parent, child, sibling, split, merger, same team/different number, and more complicated relationships. It gives interested parties a starting point as an aid to tracing the evolution of a team, and to eliminate multiple numbers if you're trying to just count teams.

FRC Teams Come From...

A breakdown by nation, and another that adds US territories and States shows where all our teams come from.

Random Statistics after the 2009 FRC season:

• 10,715 team-years (28 teams in 1992 plus 25 teams in 1993 plus...)
• 25 students per team on average
• 25% new students on average per team per year
• ~67,000 HS graduates of the FRC program (1992 through 2009 graduates)
• ~98,000 students directly Inspired by FRC (graduates + those still in HS)
  
  
• ~90% team retention each year for the past decade
• 3.9 average years of experience per team at the 2009 kickoff
• ~30% of teams are no longer with us
• 13% of all teams who've dropped out (1070), have returned (145)
• 19% of teams have changed #'s by splitting, merging, leaving /returning, changing schools or major sponsors
• 3 schools have each been known by 4 different names/permanent numbers
• 302 numbers below 3122 (latest rookie) have been skipped over by FIRST and never used by any team
• 257 additional numbers under 3122 were assigned to teams that dropped out before competing
• 1/3 of all teams have had NASA as a sponsor
• 2024 times NASA has sponsored teams
  
  From FIRST- FRC Program
• Teams .............................................. 1,677
• Students ......................................... 42,000+
• Mentors .......................................... 23,000+
• Other volunteers ............................... 6,300+
• Average students per team ......................25
• Average mentors per team ......................14
• Kickoff (main)...........................................1
• Kickoff (remote).....................................52
• Regional Events .................................... 40
• District/State Events ............................... 8
• Low-Cost Events ................................. TBD
• Championship ......................................... 1
• Championship teams ............................344
• Countries ...............................................11
• US states ...............................................48
• Canadian provinces ..................................4
• FRC recognition ............................. 56,000 medallions, 2,900 trophies, 210 banners
• Scholarship providers ...........................130+
• Scholarships available ......................... 555 worth close to $10,000,000
• Corporate sponsors ......................... 3,000
• KOP pneumatic tubing ...........................16 miles
• KOP batteries ........................................22 tons
• KOP wire ..............................................26 miles
• KOP suppliers .......................................96
• KOP material ......................................127 tons
• KOP parts per kit .................................604 (39% donated)
• KOP motors ...................................21,905
• FRC donated parts ...................... 462,398
• FRC Teams shipped robot crates .......... >1.5 million lbs.
• FRC Teams traveled to/from events ....................2.5 million miles
• What it costs FIRST per FRC team (2008)... $13,700 (covered by registration fees and corporate donations)
  
  From FIRST-All Programs
• Youth participants ......................... 160,000 (ages 6-18)
• Mentors and volunteers ................... 73,000
• Number of volunteer hours ......... 5,671,400
• U.S. States participating ......................... 50
• Countries participating ............................ 37
• SBPLI Regional volunteers ..................... 111 (up from 86 in 2008)
• FIRST salaried employees ...................... 90
• FIRST employees are based at HQ ......... 70
• FIRST employees are based in the field, i.e. Regional Directors .... 20
• FRC employees ..................................... 14.5

FRC Team Awards

FRC Team Awards 1992-present
FRC awards since the competition's inception are collected in this spreadsheet on a team-by-team basis. It shows how many awards each team has won, how many Regional Finalists there have been, which team(s) have won the most of any particular award, etc. You can use this to tease out more interesting statistics and see how your team matches up against others. Some early awards, 1992-1994, are missing, so if anyone has any of that information, please send it to us through the "Contact Us" on the left menu. All teams are here through the 2009 season.

Here is just an example:
#Wins ----- Team ----- Award

• 3 ----- Team 103 ----- Autodesk Inventor Award
• 10 ---- Team 192 ----- Autodesk Visualization Award
• 2 ----- Team 191 ----- Chairman's Award Winner
• 4 ----- Team 71 ------ Championship Winner
• 6 ----- Team 190 ----- Xerox Creativity Award
• 5 ----- Team 25 ------ Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award
• 5 ----- Team 33 ------ Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award
• 5 ----- Team 357 ----- Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award
• 5 ----- Team 177 ----- Division Champion
• 5 ----- Team 217 ----- Division Champion
• 3 ----- Team 135 ----- Division Finalist
• 3 ----- Team 85 ------ Division Finalist
• 5 ----- Team 1305 ---- Engineering Inspiration Award
• 5 ----- Team 178 ----- Engineering Inspiration Award
• 5 ----- Team 812 ----- Engineering Inspiration Award
• 5 ----- Team 330 ----- GM Industrial Design Award
• 5 ----- Team 343 ----- GM Industrial Design Award
• 5 ----- Team 67 ------ GM Industrial Design Award
• 7 ----- Team 365 ----- Imagery Award
• 7 ----- Team 599 ----- J&J Sportsmanship Award
• 7 ----- Team 68 ------ Judges' Award
• 8 ----- Team 103 ----- KPC&B Entrepreneurship Award
• 8 ----- Team 234 ----- KPC&B Entrepreneurship Award
• 8 ----- Team 67 ------ Leadership in Controls Award
• 7 ----- Team 207 ----- Motorola Quality Award
• 7 ----- Team 236 ----- Regional Chairman's Award
• 17 ---- Team 254 ----- Regional Champion
• 9 ----- Team 48 ------ Safety Award
• 5 ----- Team 191 ----- Team Spirit Award
• 5 ----- Team 217 ----- Team Spirit Award
• 5 ----- Team 287 ----- Team Spirit Award
• 5 ----- Team 88 ------ Team Spirit Award
• 9 ----- Team 234 ----- Website Design Award
• 4 ----- Team 111 ----- Woodie Flowers Regional & CMP Award
• 4 ----- Team 131 ----- Woodie Flowers Regional & CMP Award
• 4 ----- Team 188 ----- Woodie Flowers Regional & CMP Award

Research Data Sources

Data populating these charts and spreadsheets has been culled from multiple sources. If at all possible we tried to have multiple sources that could be reconciled. The best sources are the official FIRST ones of course.

• FRC Annual Team Rosters: What Events And Teams Are In My Area?
  This database is good back to 1998 with a few exceptions. In 2005 for instance, the FRC Team Database unfortunately includes two fake teams (in the event "cool guy" or "Test High School" really do exist-we apologize), so the team total drops from 990 to 988 teams. Also, for 2002 and earlier the database query fails to retrieve team names for some reason. This database starts dropping teams and becomes undependable when you reach back to 1997 or before there were permanent team numbers. Pre-1998 teams are retroactively identified in the database by their later permanent team numbers, so if you played in 1997 or earlier don't bother searching for your old temporary number. This can be a little confusing if your team in 1997 split into more teams in 1998, since both permanent numbered teams might (or might not) list 1997 as your rookie year.
  
  
• FRC official individual team records also available via: http://frclinks.frclinks.com/team/358 (links courtesy of Pat Fairbank) - just replace the team number at the end with the team you want or through the team rosters link above (but only available for active and recently active, within 3 years, teams).

FIRST has changed it's criteria over the years defining when a team is new, continuing, etc. Often the reasoning at the time involved continuing or switching sponsors, primary mentors involved in moving teams from one school to another, all reasons that are hard to uncover when we're restricted to examining raw team databases and original competition lists. That's where personal team member accounts are valuable. Rookie year's in the FIRST Team database no longer reflect when that team number actually first joined or played, but are currently based on how many team members have been involved in FRC before. This all just means you have to be careful when using the data that you understand a little deeper what the data signifies. Be wary of FIRST reports and publications. The trouble with FIRST Annual Reports and marketing brochures is that the data is often published before the year's final talley is in. Errors are usually corrected in later official reports, but brochure errors don't suffer the same scrutiny.

FIRST Official Sources:

• Internet Archive - search for www.usfirst.org
• FIRST Official Results 1992-1999
• FIRST Official Results 1992-2000 (a different layout)
• FIRST Official Results 2001
• FIRST Official Results 2002
• FIRST Official Results 2003
• FIRST Official Results 2004
• FIRST Official Results

FRC Team Origins Discussions (on CD)

• All the FRC Teams That Ever Were (2009)
• An FRC Family Tree (2010)
• Championship Winners (2008)
• FRC Team #1 (2008)
• Team Names (2006)
• All NASA Teams - 1997 (2005)
• 1 School - 2 Teams (2002)

FRC Team Registration Discussions (on CD)

• 2010 Registration Progress
• 2009 Registration Progress
• 2008 Registration Progress
• 2008 Regional Summary Spreadsheet
• 2005 Registration Progress
• 2004 Registration Progress
• 2001 Registration Progress

FIRSTsites- FRC Specific Google Search

We employ a custom Google search engine explicitly targeting more than 1600 FRC team, Regional, USFIRST, Bill's Blog, FIRST forums, Chief Delphi, IFI, NI, WPI, and related support websites. One drawback is that Google returns only one or two hits per site, so after you find the sites that have information, you can get a lot more hits by using regular Google with a particular website, e.g., "site:team358.org publicity"
FIRSTsites

Team 358 FRC Team Search

We maintain our own FRC Team Database based on the FIRST official one, however, ours retains team details long after they are defunct. We've also researched and added team information that was missing, especially from the early years when the FIRST database must have been in a rudimentary form. So if you are looking for the records of a team that last played a long time ago, it can be queried here.

FRC Team Records

• Basic team information (name, location, motto)
• Awards won
• Events attended
• Team website link (not always still active, but usually retrievable via the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive )

It's still difficult to record and accurately reflect team splits and mergers that occur over the years. Teams don't always completely disappear, sometimes they are reorganized or absorbed into other teams, often they just get a new number for some reason, and all that can be hard to track without local knowledge.