[PayneTrain]

I don't think anyone knows about this, but I may be at my last competition in April and I feel like it needs to be said.

Team 422 ran on haterade in 2009. The previous year, the fruits of mostly-student labor ended up being very sour. However, students on the team initially blamed other teams for having their mentors do all the work and conspire against them. Truthfully, the team's 2008 creation taught the team a lot of what shouldn't be done.

When Lunacy was unveiled, the seniors took it upon themselves to stick it to every team that had "wronged them" previously. It ended up that while the robot was mostly constructed out of in-house cut and welded aluminum angle and plate in addition to the KOP drive train, the greatest part of the robot was its conveyor system, designed by students, but assembled by a supplier for one of our sponsors. In fact, that conveyor was so grand, its made a modified return on this year's robot.

So what could we say now? Were we a mentor-built team? No, we were a team that busted their butts for six weeks for the first time in a few years, and got to a semifinal round in a tough away regional. Since then, the team has made it a point to mind our own business during the build season. If we work as hard as we can, there is no reason for us to not be playing on Saturday afternoon.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: why waste the effort you could be putting into making your team better with putting other teams down? Why bother wondering what powerhouse teams do behind the same closed doors you have? Why worry about how they win with what you don't have, when you should work on winning with what you built?