[CallieJ]

This thread reminded me of something really rather disturbing that happened to several members of my team at Championships in 2010.

As you may/may not know, team 1868 is an all-girls team. We're nowhere near being a powerhouse team, but we usually do reasonably well and 2010 was a good year for us. A couple of team members went up to the drive team of an alliance member during queue to talk strategy.

To our astonishment, they point-blank refused to talk to us, saying that all-girls teams suck and that we should play defense while they scored. One person literally spat at my friend in the face when she started to say that actually we were a pretty good midfield team and that that might be a better role for us to play.

The girls in question unfortunately didn't tell any FIRST officials at the time, and I didn't even hear about it until that night at our pick-list meeting. I was astonished that this had happened in FIRST, which has always been an incredibly supportive environment even for people who don't fit the usual expectations of a "robotics nerd".

I know that this isn't the sort of elitist that was directly related to the topic of the thread, but I think it is important that the community know that incidents like this happen even in FIRST.