[Jon Stratis]

we had a very similar story at North Star this year.

There was a rookie team that had trouble. A lot of trouble. Somehow during the season, the team completely fell apart. After the lock up day, someone took apart what they had finished building. Thanks to a great effort by some of the people in charge out here, and the principal of the school, they managed to get whatever they had together, and find a new team. They showed up without a robot, and with 4-5 students, only one of which had been on the team during the build season.

Knowing the condition they were in, we had already given a heads up to several of MN's best teams. Before those teams had even finished unbagging their own robot and setting up their own pits, 1816, The Green Machine, 2177, The Robettes, and 2220, Blue Twilight had students and mentors in this rookie team's pit.

These three teams worked tirelessly to help this rookie team build and program a working robot. In the end, they elected to go for a simple defensive robot with a 10-point climb. They managed to get the robot finished and fully inspected before the end of the day on Thursday.

Throughout the rest of the competition, you would see that rookie team hard at work on their robot, and others from those three teams talking and helping out.

In the end, they didn't make it into the elimination matches. However, they were one of the backup teams - a great ending for them.

When everyone was packing up, I overheard several of their students speculating on a water game for next year... I think they're hooked!


I think it's examples like these that really show Gracious Professionalism at its peak. I just feel there's an important difference/distinction between seeing one team help another and seeing several teams group together to help one.

Maybe it's the fact that one team helping another has some benefit for that team when it comes to awards (like the GP award, maybe even Chairman's if they include it in their presentation). When multiple teams come together at an event to help one that's struggling, though, that effort benefits all teams equally when it comes to awards, not giving any one team an advantage over the others that helped.

It could also be based on what I've seen at other regionals. You'll get 2-4 teams that are out there really helping other teams, but it's almost like they each stake out their portion of the regional. You almost never see them working together to help the same team at the same time.