[waialua359]

Originally Posted by CalTran

This video, although it's just 5 minutes long, really is thought changing. I think that it is translatable to FIRST robotics as well. As it's the middle of competition season, and teams are sizing up their robots against both regular teams and superpowers, I think some of us lose sight of the overarching goal - inspiration. Teams, mine included, sometimes stop dreaming about Einstein once we see that there are other more heavily funded teams out there. We stopped dreaming once our robot finished 60th out of 64 teams at Greater Kansas City. But some of us dreamed on; we spent our entire spring break and then some redesigning the shooter so that we could even stand a chance at Oklahoma.

Just take a chance. Dream and live. It's not a wild decision, but just ask yourself - if I got my team just a little bit more spending money, where would my team be then? Then, change that dream into a reality. Help your team sustain itself to inspire more kids.

As a member of team 359 since its inception, we hit our low point in the 2006 season when we lost our 2 main mentors that helped us be successful all the years prior. We ended up almost dead last at the Las Vegas regional and I could see our students feel pretty overwhelmed by the whole competition.

At the end of that season, our team never gave up, and started from the ground up again, reorganizing our construction process, sustainability/business plan, and the 5 core areas of our team: Construction, Construction support, Administration, Outreach, and Documentation.

As difficult as it was to "start all over again," with determination and inspiration from other robotics teams and partners in our community and school, we were able to overcome a lot, and be a much better team.
All of our time/efforts spent is much more efficient, while being able to sustain our program for years to come.