[EchoingJabez]

Well I just got back from my the Buckeye Regional. This was my first experience with a First robotics competition as a coach, or as a player. I thought I would take some time to share some of my thoughts on my teams rookie season and hear what some of you have in response.

First of all the competition was amazing. It was an incredibly overwhelming experience and I wish there would have been more information ahead of time to help prepare me for it but I absolutely loved it. The atmosphere was great, and it was amazing seeing all the great designs and robots that other teams brought to the competition. I loved the cooperative spirit between the teams and how helpful everyone one was while we were there. Competing was great and succeeding was even better. We didn't have the best of showings, but we were the only robot to consistently and successfully be able to hang our ubber tube on the top rung using the middle starting position. This allowed us to get three ubber tubes up when our alliance partners were each able to hang one. Now aside from all the great things I can say about the weekend there were some definite frustrations.

1. Multiple times during the completions their routers glitched/overheated/something causing our robot to not respond. The first time it happened, the robot using our station the round before ours experience the issue, during our round our robot and the one next to us dropped at the exact same time, and then the robot to come on after us in our station had the same issue. When we went to speak to the tech official or whatever his title was he dismissed us and said it was our fault not theirs without a moments notice. The same problem happened again at a later time with other robots in rounds before and after us in our station having the same issue. We were again dismissed say it was only happening to our robot when that clearly wasn't the case. Both of those matches my team lost by a small margin of points and might have easily made the difference between us moving on to the elimination. I heard the term GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM used a million times that weekend and I did not feel like we received it at all from them. I have some students on my team that are technically gifted and knowledgeable far beyond what that guy will ever be(I truly believe that) and he dismissed them like they were stupid little kids. As a rookie team with a thousand hurdles and obstacles to already have to jump over, it was really hard to so others arise due to equipment issues of the game operators. We were already underdogs enough.

2. I know there is an emphasis about everything not being about the robots and the competitions, but the reality is that the competitions and the robots is what makes first what it is. It is what we build for...we build to compete... if it isn't supposed to be about that then don't have the competitions and first as an organization will probably die out. The competitive aspect is what gets everyone excited: spectators, students, mentors, everyone. Without that you wouldn't have the amazing ingenuity and the incredible learning that takes place. Now just because we are competitive doesn't mean that we are not able to also benefit from all the other amazing things that first represents and stands for like coopertition and what not, but I think it is really important to try to protect he sanctity of the competition. So if competition is valued then I think equity is an important part of that. Obviously it is already a tremendous advantage for many of the teams to have access to a tremendous amount of resources and expertise that my team will never dream of having because we aren't next door to a Ford Motor Company or something like that. I have accepted the fact that this is how it will be and that's fine. I do however think that those issues are compounded even more when teams travel the country competing in 3 or 4 regional event having extra time to drive, build, modify their robot simply because they have the funds and the resources to do so. If they are going to be able to do that then I should be able to keep my robot for all the extra weeks that they are traveling around working on theirs, it simply makes a lopsided competition even more lopsided and honestly quite disturbing.

You can't tell me it isn't about competition, I saw the faces on the kids of the teams that won the buckeye regional. Competition is everything and it was discouraging for me to see how incredibly far and seemingly impossible it is for my team to ever find itself in that position. It is hard to see these powerhouses come in and take away our chance at achieving "a greater level of success" just because they can. It feels a little like bullies on a playground or something.

Now all that being said. I don't want to leave the impression that I can't stand First. This season was absolutely amazing. Working with my students, all the things they and I learned, the regional competition were all absolutely incredible and I will definitely be back next year. There was just some stuff that got to me a little bit.

Would love to hear some thoughts, really on any of it. Maybe even hear if other teams experience the signal issues that many of us did at the buckeye regional.