Most Memorable First Moment
 

I am sure this topic has been used time and time again, but sitting here at Ball State University, I had some free time on my hands and thought I'd bring it up again.

Since I've come to college, I've been really missing my old team, and find myself reminiscing about past robotics seasons. I was wondering what all of your most memorable moments from FIRST are--moments that are forever etched in your memory that you can't help but smile when you think about. It doesn't have to be from this past season, but from any year. What is the one moment you will never forget?

For me, it's probably a combination of all the pep-talks and encouraging words I received from all the mentors I worked with, but especially the film crew mentors. I will never forget the advice I got during 2007 nationals from my mentor. I was on the main floor, taking pictures of all the goings-on, and as the day went on, I kept getting more sad because it was my last year/event on Team Hammond. My mentor noticed this, and gave me a peptalk. He said, "I know you're feeling sad right now. And you have every reason to be. But if you feel sad now, you're going to miss out on feeling excited and happy about what's happening. You won't be able to take in the moment. So, you have two choices. You can either stay sad and miss out now, or be sad later, and take in all the wonderful experiences there are here. It's your choice. But I think I know what you're gonna chose." And thanks to his words of advice, I lived up the moment and had an awesome time.

What moment will you remember forever? And don't worry about sounding long-winded. Look at my post! :)

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Winning Regional Chairman's at Wisconsin last year. It was just such a shock to us.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

I don't have any specific moments. I have a few that stand out more but there is no "most memorable" moment for me. One of them was in 2006 Atlanta, I learned that in the face of all that is wrong, you need to have a bit of faith and to not over react. At Bayou '07 I ran to our robot which was getting ready to play and I had to put on one of those blue pins that drivers have to try to fix some controls problem. As soon as my mentor and I fixed the problem we were relieved, but the excitement and the pressure and the adrenaline rush of just having to do your best in less than a minutes time was something that nothing can beat. Soon afterwards at the Lone Star regional, I was jumping up and down because I couldn't sit still in the eliminations because many of the matches were very close and one of my mentors kept saying something along the lines of "in the end everything everything will turn out OK."

And then how could I forget IRI 2007 and the gracious professionalism and teamwork shown by many people from different teams coming together to give Andy a special treat!

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Finals at San Diego this year was nice.... first time since '03 that happened.

It was also nice giving 330 their only loss of the regional after they beat us so many matches before (preship scrimmage,and qualifying matches at LA/SD). They're good people though... definately deserved the two regionals & Division win.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

The one I'll remember from this season: watching our team go through alliance selection as the #12 seed. Since we had no scoring ability whatsoever, our only realistic hope was to become an alliance captain. The sixth alliance made their pick, which left two teams above us: 804 and 1746. At this point, I figure we're seeing backup duty (for the second straight year in my case, as 1293 found itself there the year before)...until 804 picks 1746.

If our operator down on the far side of the field heard my shout, I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

The night we finished our 2007 robot and realized how awesome it was.

Most of my team considers our 2005 & 2006 robots failures. They weren't much to be proud of :( But the 2007 robot was amazing. That first night restored a huge amount of confidence to our team. It was the first time in years that we could be proud of what we had built.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

I originally had started to write something about being the new driver as a first year student, but about halfway through I thought of another unforgettable experience. Detroit regional 2007.

After being defeated in a very rough and aggravating quarterfinal, I was pretty much devastated. Being the new driver, I felt like I had totally let the team down, so I just went outside and sat by myself for a little bit. When I came back in I still couldn't bring myself to sit with the team, so I watched some matches from the TVs in the pit. Last year's driver found me, gave a little cheerup talk, and we wnet to sit with some friends from team 469 and cheered on their alliance as they went on to become regional finalists.

Cheering with them for the Guerrillas was so much fun, I had completely forgotten about how upset I was earlier. However, the excitement was just beginning. When the announcer got about halfway through his speech about the Chairmans' winner, I could see our 4 Chairman's writers start getting all antsy and excited up in the stands; obviously he had said something from their presentation. Sure enough, we had won the Regional Chairman's award. Greatest feeling ever, as we celebrated and hugged and cried and everything afterwards.

While we were celebrating, one of our seniors had been down using the scoring computer for something. Suddenly, he came running up to us, screaming "I GOT INTO MIT!! I GOT INTO MIT!!!" I guess they posted their acceptances online at noon that day, so he used the computer to check it out. It was the perfect end to that day.


I have some others from Atlanta, strategizing with Andy Baker or watching that incredible ramp in the Einstein finals or relaxing outside between matches, but the whole sequence of events at Detroit was just incredible, I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Dang... that's a lot of exciting stuff for one day.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

That moment came this year. I have been a part of a lot of alliances, but none of the provided the memories that the number 5 alliance at GLR provided. It was the first time I went out for selections, and we were the captains which made it cooler. We were able to edge out a very good alliance in the quarters, we even had a row of 256 in our second match.

But what made it memorable was our semifinal match. I don't know if people remember but teams 1114 and 67 were really good. Their third partner was team 57, who had a great year as well. They were the number one seed, and I think everyone in the building was picking them to win. We went into that match praying not to wind up on the wrong end of a beat down, but what happened was one of those moments where you realize why FIRST plays the matches. In game one, we eked out a victory, due to some brilliant spoiler play and a few nice tube placements. In game two, our alliance put up two spoilers, making it a win and securing what might be the biggest upset in official FIRST competition history.

We went to the finals, only to have the wheels fall off. After taking game one, 1503 had arm trouble, and us and 1023 were not able to step up our games, we were defeated by a very potent number 2 alliance.

Why I remember this, it was the most fun I have ever had in a competition. It was such a great competition, and playing that number one alliance was one of the most intense and fun experiences of my life. I still think of it as one of our best matches ever.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Getting the Regional Inspirational Engineering Award at Davis.

Actually, the best part was HOW we got it.


So, it's Sunday (Sunday? Saturday? I don't remember. Last day of the regional.) and we're sitting up there in the stands. Because I'm a scout/machinist, I've been watching other teams bots the whole time and when the announcers begin to read out the description for an award, I guess the team.

Our team was pretty sure we'd get the safety award. One of my friends was quite disappointed that we had put so much effort into everything and still didn't get to go to Atlanta. I told him "What if we don't get safety and we get the Engineering award instead?". He wrote the question off and continued to be disappointed.

Anywho, the announcer started to read the paper for the engineering award and I begin to think "Gee, this team has done a lot. Heck, they even went to NUMMI like we did." The announcer continued, giving more hints. After he mentioned how old the team was, I kept thinking it was 670 or somebody REALLY close to us. One of my teammates (the person who talked to the announcers or whoever about our team) was convinced that it was us (what they said was almost verbatim apparently).

The announcer said "Six". I paid closer attention. Still thinking it was 670.

The announcer said "Seven". Still thought it was 670. I was ready to stand up and applaud a team that we had been on good terms with for two years and had acheived quite a bit.

The announcer said "Five".

I swear, it was almost as if a human explosion of cheering, laughing, crying and love burst out all around me. In a stupor (quite literally) some of us were crying, we were all hugging each other, stumbling over one another, not knowing how to feel or react and just letting emotions take over.

Now, lets pause here.

My team didn't know that you were invited to Atlanta for that. So we were happy that we acheived something big, but the best news hadn't come yet.

Resume...

So we all begin to run down there, watching the other teams stand and applaud us, giving us high-fives as we run/jog/walk past them, and I'm thanking each and every one of them on the way. We get down to the field, accept our trophies and medals, and go back to where we were sitting, all celebrating and happy.

Apparently one of the judges said to one of our mentors "Good luck in Atlanta".

That's when the REAL crying began.

I swear, I was crying for about two hours after that. No joke. My Dad and step-mom who already left got a phone call, my sister got a phone call, my mother was there (to watch me become overflowed with emotion), and when we got down to the pits more crying and hugging and cheering and such continued.

We then went out front and all talked about Atlanta, the award, etc, taking tons of photos with our awards and the team and such.


So yeah. That's my most memorable FIRST moment. While being in Atlanta was really fun (but a LOT of work -- I was suprised! Being a scout was hard enough as it is, so it's a good thing that the build team (mainly Blake and myself) built the chassis so well that I didn't have to fix it), I'd say that it definately didn't top the satisfaction of finding out we were going in the first place.

-Mike

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Wow.
This is very similar to what happened to me in the Israeli Regional, but it wasn't this exciting, dangit!:ahh:

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Foe me itgetting the result of SM 1.2 lof Aim Gigh's Israeli regional.
We were an all rookie alliance, with me as alliance captain.
The reult of SM 1.1 was in our favour. The second match we scored only 1 canter goal and didnt get up to any ramp. It was a very low scoring, defensive match. The final result was 5-4 in our favor, we were in the finals, and as far as i know, the only alliance ever in any FIRST regional, with all-rookie teams. I couldn't stop jumping and hugging everyone for about 2 minutes. After those 2 minutes i went to shake hands with all the driving team of the opposing alliance.
It was amazing!

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

For me the start of the 2007 started on a downer, because I lost a very dear friend of mine in December. So once we started building it was nice to have a distraction. We were coming off a really lucky win from the Cal Games, so we took what we learned there and realized that defense could do well in Rack 'n' Roll. So we named our robot after my late friend. We ended up with a little aluminum box on wheels. At SVR we competed as hard as we could, and at the end of Saturday I saw us in the top 5 in standings. I looked to my seconed in command and I remember saying "We might pull this off..." After our last qualifying round I remember watching the board, seeing if we would drop down, and when I saw the final standings we were sitting third. So we picked 190 who were seeded below us (which was funny since our mentor went to WPI many years ago) Then it came around to our pick again, and I asked 190's captain what she thought, and she said 1280... So I picked our schools biggest rival in everything else to be our alliance partner (that was fun to explain to our principal, when he asked "Did we beat San Ramon?!") At the end of the day, we couldn't believe it. But that truely was my happiest moment of my Senior year, and my most memorable moment in FIRST.

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

Funny thing, that culture changing concept, isn't it? :)

Re: Most Memorable First Moment
 

FIRST definitely is inspiring in many ways, but one of the ways it inspires me the most is the way that it can bring everybody together. When I was on Team Hammond, we were composed of the four area high schools in Hammond, IN. Normally, all of the schools are HUGE rivals. However, with robotics, we all come together and form our own little family, and all the barriers that were there before are just gone.

That's just one of the amazing powers of FIRST, I guess.
:)