There is absolutely no reason why any team cannot excel at first as long as they have the determination to do so. I'll use my team as an example. For years our team was struggling to win a regional after winning the world chairmen's award in 2008. The robot itself became the prime focus during build season and every year we did our very best to perfect it in every way we can. Every year we went more and more beyond to make each year a more successful year. For example in 2010, we built our first practice bot along with our regular robot. It was hard because we don't have a very large sponsor base and usually us students and mentors have to pitch in parts out of our own pockets. This practice bot though allowed us to continue developing and practicing with our robot and led us to having the best robot we ever had. In 2011 we extended our mentorship and for the first time had a mechanical engineer on our team and also founded a partnership with FRC 39/FTC 4314. Continuing to find ways to improve your team is key to being successful and it led us to finally winning a regional after 10 years. This year we are still improving ourselves. We don't have a cad class nor have ever used cad. So we taught ourselves cad and for the first time have cadded our robot before it is built. Just look at our past robots. You can see a dramatic improvement in each one and that is with the about the same number of students working on it and about the same amount of money. You are your own limitation. Kudos for 1114 and 2056 for making such spectacular robots every year. Seeing you guys and other "powerhouses" only drives us to be just as good as you guys.
