What was your best memory from this year/ever?
 

I just wanted to see some of the interesting things people did this year and since they've been in FIRST. Personally, this year so many crazy things happened. The scariest thing that happened was just watching our autonomous work beautiful on the practice field at UCF Thursday Evening, and watch the tether cable get kinked. Then it rips the tether system out of the RC. It scared me so much, I thought we wouldn't be able to run the next day. Thanks to a loaner, we kinda worked though :)

My favorite moment from this year cam eon the second day at Buckeye. Ken Whitlief led a vigorous cheer between four of the Rochester teams who were sitting close to each other. Blue Lightning and the X-Cats would scream "Rochester!!!" and The visioneers and Sparx would scream "New York!!!" and they kept it up for about five minutes. As a matter of fact all of the Rochester teams were quite noisy all day long. Runner ups were Laini organising the Rochester cheer down by the field using the letters and Sparx, Blue Lightning, the Visioneers and the X-Cats making noise in the front end of the arena before they let us in.
Fun times.:)

Re: What was your best memory from this year/ever?
 

yeah, thats why you never tighten the tether down...I think if we had had our tether tightened down this might have happened to us this year.

Re: Re: What was your best memory from this year/ever?
 

We had 18 feet of slack lol, but one of the connectors between 2 of the 6 foot cables got stuck in the ramp mesh, and got caught and we couldnt shut it off in time to stop that from pullin it out.

This year at Philly, MOE was sitting in the spot that the camera man was shooting during the awards and when the camera was pointed to watch the teams accept their awards you could see MOE in the stands so someone on my team(Carlo) decided it would be funny to dance for the camera, so we did. there was about 20 MOE people all spinning to the right for one shot. the next we would spin to the left. than we would wave our arms back and forth, the best was when half of the people doing in would bob-down while the other half stayed up and vise-versa, it was great, the camera man finally caught on and moved so you couldn't see us dance anymore, but it was great while it lasted

one of the best team jokes this year :"I build robots...does that turn you on?"-Carlo at the ice skating rink to the girl at the desk

Oh i almost forgot, in Philly at 30th street train station some of us went there for lunch on Thursday and we brought some buttons with us.. every place we stopped in that station someone working at the store or whatnot had a button on, even the SWAT guy with the bomb sniffing dog had one on, hehehe that took 5 Min's to get him to wear that on his arm, those are some of my bet memories..... good times, there are so many more stories but i would be typing forever

My best memory would have to be the last night in the hotel because that is when all the ford teams who stayed at the Best western said our goodbyes. That was very touching and I want to thank all those who made it possiable for us rookies to have the time of our lifes.

In New Hampshire the funniest yet scariest thing happened during the competition... We just got our arm to work in auto mode... It would swing unbelievably fast at the stack but we tried to fix it to make it take out more stacks but what happened was it swung the opposite way... IT ALMOST TOOK OUT DEAN AND A JUDGE!!! We were so relieved that we missed them...

We haven't really had a problem with tethers thanks in part to our long serial cables.

Many of my memories are a blur but I'd say the best was the last match of the LA regional where we pushed our opponent off in the last second to win the match. We did lose for QP's though, but anyone who saw it can't say it wasn't one of the greatest matches ever.

The second best memory is when our other driver MO ran on to the field in the middle of a match to turn the robot on (Phoenix Practice)

My favorite memory from this year was...hmmm....well.....i had a blast when i took my first ride on our homemade cart. You see, this year we were trying to custom build a cart to carry our robot around. Ummm, it didn't work out that well. It was to fast and really hard to turn. It wasn't practical for the competitions but a blast to ride around on! When i rode it it was a motor in front, a seat, a steering arm and a frame...that is all. I guess you had to be there...it was really fun!!!

Here is what it looks like, Tyler is sitting on the back, Armin is working on something and Ashton is behond him. It was a blast!

http://www.bcrobotics.org/20022003/images/robotcart.jpg

We were allianced with Sanddrag, that game was great! To bad our robot was touching you guys and still touching the ramp, actually the ramp was touching us, but that is a completely different story. Anyway, this whole year was one big memory that i will never forget and can't wait till next year!

another great memory is when someone(Hazmat) from my team and my self wanted to hang one of or teams huge banners, but since no one was allowed to go up past the 100 level, we really wanted to hang our banner so thanks to some people from team 25 we found a way to get past the guards that were guarding the doors to get to the elevators, we had another person from our team walk up to the door, than walk away like he was going to find another door and the guard followed him and we ran through the door, and got to the elevator, the guy running it didn't care that we wanted to go up, once we got off on the 200 level we had to climb over lots of seats and rails and stuff to get to where we wanted to hang the banner. when we got it hung someone from our tea yelled up to us that security was waiting for us so we went to find another way down, we walked until we found the back ramp back down to the 100 level, when we walked through the doors another guard asked us why we came through those doors and i said just joking that we were looking for the astrodome(since we were coming from the upper part of the reliant stadium i thought the guy would see right through that line) and he said oh you guys are in the wrong part, you need to go down those stairs and pointed down the hall.

about 20min later the banner had to be taken down by some other people on my team.

that is something i wont forget for along time

Getting a picture and signature by Dean and Woodie!!

My rookie year in FIRST was in 2000, my Sophomore year of High School. During the award ceremonies, I happened to make the comment, "If I ever start a team, I want that award" when the Rookie All-Star award was handed out :rolleyes:

To my surprise, I did end up starting a team with some other great FIRSTers here at U of A. Even more to my surprise was when we won the Rookie-All star award at the AZ regional. This would have to be my favorite memory, especially when our most wonderful students told us, "We did it for you". I couldn't help myself, I balled like a baby :yikes:

I ended up being teary eyed again when we talked to our hero's Mike Rush and Rob M, because it was them who we learned to be such great mentors. They shed tears too :cool:

Yea I got ticked that we weren't allowed to go to the top level.. so I found this one lady and started chatting her up with hopes that she'd let me go up for a minute to videotape..

She told me that the reason we couldn't go up was because FIRST hadn't rented the upper levels.. So I asked her how much it would cost for me to rent the top level for 30 seconds and pulled out my wallet (wink wink).. She laughed but wouldn't let me go up..

To my surprise Andrew was driving the robot at Phoenix regional. Afterwards he came rushing to the bleachers to share with me, "That was the coolest thing I've EVER done in my life!!!" He went on to excitedly talk about how he'd probably damaged their robot. I said, "Cool! Now go and apologize and offer to help!" He did, and came back to share that with me too.

His astonishment, excitement, new enthusiasm for the program, the look on his face, and sharing it with me. Very cool! THEN understanding about GP - good stuff!

Seeing 461 win the Chairman's in Evanston was probably one of the greatest moments of competition I've seen this year. I was so excited for them!

So many cool moments on our team this year.

TOPS was the rush of hearing our team number called to be an alliance parter at the Canadian regional. We were in 8th place before our last seeding match - almost earned our own way into the playoffs (would of been the first time our team did that!)

Winning the J&J Sportsmanship award at Canadian regional - I was not expecting that

the match where our front wheel got snapped clean off the robot - the driver was just about to hit the kill switch when he saw me on the sidelines - waving to the ramp and screaming GO! GO! GO! - the bot dragged itself up the ramp on three wheels

the first time auton mode worked - cant remember if it was a practice match or our first match at buckeye - but hitting the wall hard and fast was our primary strategy - our whole team was on its feet the 1st time it worked.

getting THREE team spirit plaques from other teams at Toronto was pretty cool - we were a certified X-cats clone (who has won the team spirit award at Buckeye three years in a row now) complete with our own (blue) hinged 2x4 clappers- we didnt win the offical team spirit award at toronto - but we sure taught a lot of canadians how to 'ROCK THE HOUSE'

OH! I almost forgot - thankyou thankyou thankyou to the guy from the team with the Segway - who let me ride it a bit and took my photo
:c)

Let's go Blue!
 

Funniest Moment - During the finals cliff and myself got our entire team and alliance partners cheering "Let's go Blue!" by leading them with the bullhorns....finally they all realized we were actually the red alliance. I found it to be quite humorous :-D

On the way back from a competition
 

It was getting dark as we ride the hour it takes to get back to the high school. The van i was riding in was behind the other van. To kill time we were having fun talking. Robert, one of our seniors, started to tell us about his "vision" or day dream. He said that we will see 2 vehicles, on in a few miles. Continuing he said that the second one will be at a certain exit, (I cant remember the number he said. it was somewhere around 57.) and it will be right by a movie theater. A few miles later we saw the first vehicle on the side of the road just like he said. Not to long later we pass the van with the other half of our team in it. As the van i was riding in got off of the express way Mr. Welch's cell phone rang. Mr. Welch is one of our coaches who was driving. After he got off the phone he told us that that was his daughter, Miss. Welch, the driver of the other van. He told us that we have to turn around they have a flat tier. So when we got to the van with the flat tier we found that it was by the same exact exit Robert said, and it was right by a movie theater. Very weird. When we got back to the high school we talked to Miss. Welch to find out what happened. She said that the van started to feel weird so she slowed down. That was when we passed her. When we were out of sight her tier blew to peaces. Then she said after she got out to see what had happened she got back in the van and said "I'm calling my daddy!" It was funny to hear that from a coach. I will never forget that day.

it wasnt our best moment but it was the weirdest

I wanted to put up our large X-Cat banner that I had made a year ago and when the security guy told me we couldn't go up there I nearly went nuclear. If 25 could have their banner up there why could we put ours up? They said they had no idea where it was, which either made them liars or very stupid.
One of the mentors on our team manged to sneak upstair and hang up the banner anyways but they quickly took it down.
In the end we got to hang it off the side of the ramp and the security gaurd even helped us hang it up. So it all turned out cool.

Another great memory for me was hearing our name called as we won a technology award in Jersey for our palm pilot scouting and the arm on our robot... No one had expected it... We got to go to Houston for it...

One of the coolest things was from this year... everyone 'tried' to bully us around. When at CE (Galileo) in a match against 1029 and 9 I think... we were pushing people around on the hill.. and we got in a teter-totter position.. and we were trying to turn the opposite way as we were hit... and were flipped. Everyone started screaming and thought that we were out for the count. Well, I quikly realized that we have an arm.. the arm rotates into several modes.. so I 'unpacked' the arm, rotated it, and sat our robot upright again, and we backed up on top of the ramp.:p

Near the end of the practice day at the midatlantic regionals, our robot's transmission broke down. There were two practice matches left for us so we decided to just send a human player out while trying to fix the transmission. Our strategy was to build a human player stack of 8 bins. :D

Of course, we took longer than 10 seconds. The second time we did it, our human player just stared at the stack after he put it together. (it was a little wobbly) He took 20 seconds and we got disqualified. XD Not that it really matters..

The 8 bin stack was suprisingly stable though. It took the other alliances about 3 passes (IIRC) at the stack (in the last practice round) before they could knock it down. The weight of the 8 bins probably helped stabilize it.

Favorite memories are volenteering at SVR and seeing our robot run.
Volenteering at SVR was the first time I've volenteered. All the people there were awsome. You wouldnt believe how compliant people are. !

GREATEST TIME???not just one!!!
 

hey there. this is my first year on the robotics team and let me just say it was absolutely incredible. of course when i tell me friends about it, they automatically think about battlebots. in some ways, FIRST is kinda like that. you know? definitely in the finals! i watched a final match at VCU and i was soooo incredibly amazed. i loved it. i wanted to do more. i did many tasks on the team so i don't know what i really am except for a helpful team member. at VCU my favorite part was getting to meet three friends from landstown, VA (whom i still talk to) and getting to watch the matches and meeting other people and teams during scouting. it was awesome.

then at philly, it was even cooler. being in the hotel with 2 other girls that are so cool, made me feel like i didn't want to go home! and everyone had a great time. during the competition, our team met the brazilian team, 383, and arranged to have dinner with them. not many of them spoke english, but i got around the language barrier by learning a bit of portugese. i miss team 383 because i had gotten so close to them. i still email them also! and they did great in the competition. i was very proud of them. :D

lastly, we have houston. oh what a wonderful experience. this trip i really DIDN'T want to come home! :) nationals was awesome (even with all the walking up, like, 8 ramps) and i really enjoyed it. it was so cool to be able to walk around and look at the different divisions and see who had the upper hand. so many different robot designs, and yet, so many the same! i was amazed at how many teams had robots similar to ours! i definitly got to get to know more people there also. team 365, team 357, team 1114, and others. it fills my heart with soooo much joy to even think about nationals. i already miss it :(

sadly, i'm afraid that i will not be able to be on team 122 next year. hopefully, my home school, smithfield high school, will follow through their plans of making a robot team. this would really be awesome because i love robotics so much. i gave up volleyball and softball for this "sport" and have come to love it just as much as my favorite game; softball.

well, this has been a great experience and i have shared my favorite times. i hope everyone has a great year and congratulations to all of the teams!!! :D

~Tiger21

I would say that there are so many great memories that I have had this year. However my top two because I cannot pick between the both of them.
One: winning the Rookie All Star Award at the Arizona Regional. And it was not winning it but it was seeing those kids so excited to win. It was a very proud moment for me.
Two: At the end of closing ceremonies at nationals this year when everyone had left and I got to stand with 3 really good friends and look out onto the Einstein Field and stand there in silence realizing what it was that we had accomplished that year.

Everything was good
 

This year was a new experience, with good and bad points. But more good I believe. Best memory was when after the Rutgers event we helped take down the field and look in the stands for items. Taking down the field was a True FIRST thing and it made me feel good inside. The field managers loved us for helping and thanked us to. I hope every team reads this and thinks what they can do for FIRST to help them out next year. So this was one moment that stands out. Later, (Brains)

Hearing Mark Leon announce the winner for Judge's Choice award at SVR. I really don't know what he said...But it contained "old couch" and "spicy." We were cheering like mad before our number was even called. :D

Beating the Poofs at SVR. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that I thought we couldn't beat them. And we did.

Meeting all my buddies I got to know on CD at Nationals! Well, except for one...And that was completely my fault. I mean, he was in the pit right next to me. I was scared. =|

Getting all the comment for having a wooden bot. Even if it was just a "What the...?"
I especially liked getting the almost-lectures on what a smart idea it was to use wood. Oh yeah...smartness...

that was really nice of you to take the field down like that, but I do have one small request:

next year WAIT TILL SATURDAY!

[just kidding]

My best memories
 

My best memories would have to be everything that happened.

Now, some highlights of this would be meeting Dean Kamen (Like most of us have already done) and attending the Kickoff.

With all of that said (Very Little) I can say that I cannot wait until next year!! Maybe I'll meet Woodie Flowers, or maybe win the championship!