[robostangs548]

I have been a student and FIRST mentor since I was 8 years old. I am now 21, and with school and work now consuming my life, I will be announcing my resignation from the team that I have grown to love and hold as my number one priority over the last few years. I have grown with this team from the "new-beginning" where we lost all sponsorship my freshman year, and paid mostly out of pocket to build and compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition.

Since this was what I considered the "last year" I decided to dedicate most of my time, mentoring and helping build both an amazing team, and robot. Along with the a dedicated team, thousands of hours, and a hard earned budget, this was the first experience I have had on Einstein. I can remember watching all of the great teams that I grew up with on Einstein from 1998-2011, and dreaming that with enough dedication, fund-raising, and overall team effort, we would one day be able to compete with those teams. Our team worked to find sponsors, mentors, and build a dream robot. After many all-nighters and extreme dedication, finally, that opportunity came with a near perfect alliance of 118, 2194, and 548.

Though it is still unknown what the root cause of these issues were, I am amazed that with a overall financial contribution as large as those in which large corporations and other donors have contributed, along with the number of engineers and other volunteers involved, FIRST was still unable to fix an issue that was known week one.

My "pit-crew", along with others, sat field-side disheartened by the fact that technology was failing not only our alliance partners, but also all of our opponents. An image that sits burned into my brain is the "This is FIRST" video that used to be on the FIRST website, where one of the mentors says "Months of Work.... Sat there.... Dead...." and really brings an emotional side out of me that can't be put into words. I can say with a large level of confidence, that this issue had nothing to do with the robots, but rather the field. I think the scores of these Einstein matches were a clear indicator of how messed up the outcome of this really was.

A team like 118, who is mentored by engineers that work on projects that literally leave our planet, who had a robot that not once had an issue through our entire Newton competition, without even a slight modification in code, were handicapped with a robot that "Sat there.... Dead...." every match on Einstein with the only reason being that of field coms.

118 proceeded to be lectured by an FTA that it definitely was not field issues, but rather issues with their robot. They pulled up a report from their robot only to see that the field could definitely be the reason for the loss of communication at the start of the match. The FTA said it could be their cRio having an issue, so they swapped out to a new cRio only to have results matching those from matches prior.

I was amazed how teams on the field pulled together, worked as a team, and almost every team said "we did not want to win this way." All teams were upset at one point or another with the outcome of these Einstein matches. From the field, we heard the lack of cheering, and could see the look of utter shock in the faces of everyone in the audience. Though the FTA's did work hard to help solve this issue, I believe that FIRST had no idea what was going on. Do I think they made the right decisions in how they handled the situation? Far from it. Do I think they knew what the issue was? Absolutely not. But after that entire disheartening fiasco, I would assume they wont let it happen again. I think that all the teams were amazing, and though it was upsetting, it was an honor to leave FIRST surrounded by everyone I grew up admiring.

Congrats 16, 26, 180.