[sdcantrell56]

Martin,

I'll start out by saying Haters gone' hate! Apparently this is becoming the price you pay for being a top team in a region.

Now with that little bit out of the way, I will say that I was actually standing around while some of these comments were said and was frankly shocked, considering the teams that were saying them. With us (2415) being in the same situation the past few years, I have been hearing more and more mindless banter directed at our team in addition to 1771 and until this year it hasn't bothered me. However, this year, multiple times have I heard that I have personally designed our entire robot. As much as I would like to take credit for it, this is a blatantly wrong comment and it irks me that other students and mentors alike don't believe that students are capable of designing our machine. It has been a strange year for me, I have never had a problem with people complaining about us having money and resources because that doesn't personally insult my students but once teams start insinuating that students aren't capable of what they clearly are, I take offense.

It seems many of these "haters" would be much better served to take the time to talk to my students who designed the majority of the robot and the same for all these teams that are traditionally in the crossfire for being "mentor built and designed". I can't remember a single person from any of these teams that were so eager to call us out actually taking the time to talk to myself or any of the students who were responsible for the majority of the build and design. It might just inspire some of these adults as to what they should expect from their students with a little bit of guidance and mentoring.

Finally, of course their are teams with insane budgets and that are fully mentor built and designed but WHO CARES. FIRST has never taken a stance on this subject because these teams still manage to inspire kids to go into the engineering field which is the entire point of the program.