[GaryVoshol]

I blame it on my daughter's elementary teacher. She told us, "B.. really ought to be on this MindStorms team." (That's what we called FLL, named after the product.) So the next year they started with Volcanic Panic.

The next year, FLL came up with this thing called a Project, and my wife became the project coach.

After 4 years, we thought maybe we ought to help out at the state tournament. We did queuing for technical presentations, and we kept those slow tech judges on schedule! Members of my daughter's now graduated FLL team judged this new thing they had, Jr FLL.

That same year my daughter joined the FRC team. We found that going to competitions was really pretty boring, especially on practice day. Lots of waiting around to see your team on the field for 2 minutes. So the following year we started volunteering. After stints in queuing and pit admin, I became a referee and was asked to be a head referee when we went to the district system and suddenly had more than twice the number of events to cover. Also about that time I started reffing in FLL, and have been one of the state head refs for several years now.

So even though my daughter will graduate from college this year - with the help of thousands and thousands of dollars of scholarships, much of them earned because of her FIRST experiences - I'm staying with it. I want to help give other young people the experiences and opportunities my daughter had. And it's a load of fun!