Quote:
Originally Posted by Ka'elaPruitt
FIRST wants this whole experience to be a friendly and fair competition, as well as a learning period..
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Sorry, no. FIRST is not fair. Never has been, never was meant to be, Dean has come out and said it blantantly. It is not fair. Neither is life.
Getting on my soapbox here for a minute about "elite" vs. non elite and what that means to winning, because I have a pretty good personal example.
I was a member of Team 40 and 190 basically from 1995-2006 (off and on, but you get the point) Well established teams, full machine shops, good sized budgets etc. On 40 we had access to a full shop as well as numerous CNC machines that the kids can program and run because intelitek makes educational CNC equipment. I was used to designing and building 100% custom machined robots and ordering pretty much whatever I wanted. I don't think I need to post about the success of either of those 2 teams.
2009 - I get a new job, I now live in Tennessee and start team 2775 with Greg Needel. We have about $3000 to build the robot, nothing fancier than a band saw and drill press and a small closet out of which we can work in and all brand new kids many of whom had never used a screwdriver before (not exaggerating here).
We were finalists (3rd overall pick) in 2009 to 16&71 and Rookie All-Stars in St. Louis and picked by 1717 at Champs and finalists on Galileo to the eventual champs.
In 2010 we won St. Louis (first overall pick) and also made elim's at Champs and won a few awards on the way.
How did we do it? It wasn't with money or fancy machining because we didn't have either of those things. It was with organization, knowing HOW to build a robot in 6 weeks, building a very cheap practice robot, keeping everything as dirt simple as possible (for money and manufacturing reasons) and practice practice practice. We won and did well because our drive team had tons of practice. We had a very small budget, it was worth it to direct 1/3 of it towards a practice robot and lower the overall amount we could spend on the competition bot.
And you have to be organized. You have to come to each meeting with a plan, and materials. It takes as much time to organize a build season as it does to build a robot...that is the most important piece that alot of teams are missing. You think being elite means being a well oiled machine, well yeah, it does, but that doesn't happen by accident. It's being the well oiled machine that makes you a better team, not the other way around.
So please stop complaining that it's not fair. It's not, but you can still be very successful if you make the right choices with the resources you have. The robots we built in 2009 and 2010 can be built by ANY team, it's more about decision making than what you do or don't have.