[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Wing

How can a team share its excitement for STEM and lead others in the community when it fields a box on wheels at competition?

My team, while not entirely guilty of this, is definitely one of the teams that any person desiring "competitive" robots at Championships would pick out as "not deserving to be there." Our robot started at the top of the height limit, was tippy, tried to do too much and ended up doing not enough. We won two matches in Curie, mostly on luck. We literally rebuilt key robot mechanisms, including the drive train and shooter and climber, almost a half dozen times during the competition season alone. This isn't even restricted to this year. Our robots are fairly consistently ineffective.

And yet we qualified based on RCA. We spread our our team's spirit for STEM through hosting mini-regionals, workshops, a week zero event, and mentoring over twenty FLL teams (and by mentor I mean we give them kits, computers, and personnel). I'm not going to go through the laundry list of things that my team and I personally have done to spread our excitement for STEM in our community, but we do it. We struggle and we improve, and this year we were fortunate enough to be recognized for the first with the Regional Chairman's Award at the North Star Regional, where we've been submitting for almost six years.

Are we an absolute model team? Probably not. But our kids leave the program with a heck of a lot more than they came into it with.

When we come to Championships, we recognize the privilege that it is wholeheartedly, and we make the most of it. Out of the 50-odd people that came with us to Championships, 46 of them were full-time researching, interviewing, and connecting with other teams. The other four were our drive team.

I'm probably coming off as a bit defensive, and that's because I am, because without my team having the opportunity to come to Championships, our team would have never had the impetus to change, to become better. We came because the judges thought we inspired our community, and we left with nothing less than a desire to spread the incredible enthusiasm from both effective and non-effective robots and teams that we saw at Championships to our community. To me it's incredibly offensive to insinuate that our lackadaisical robot design somehow prevents us from spreading our enthusiasm to others.

I love FIRST and I love what it stands for, but I would have never been as enthusiastic and motivated as I am now if I hadn't had the opportunity to see the incredible field at Championships last year, and this year. Our local competition isn't always the most inspiring. Like most "low-competitiveness" regionals, we have a fair share of robots that struggle to even drive, much less shoot or effectively load frisbees. There's a reason that a large proportion of Minnesota regional winners aren't from Minnesota. There's something to be said about low levels of competition inspiring low levels of improvement. When you were born and raised in a ditch it's sometimes difficult to see out of it.

Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All Star are all incredibly important awards for FIRST because it enables teams that would not otherwise be able to to see the absolutely incredible nature of FIRST at the highest level. It's important not to forget that the majority of FRC teams are struggling to even field a robot at all, much less compete. Maybe "rainbows and unicorns" isn't the way to go, but it clearly isn't the direction that FIRST has chosen-- winning EI, Chairman's, or RAS takes serious work. It's belittling to claim that these teams are any less representative of what FIRST is about that teams that build incredible robots year after year.

I don't put much stock in teams attending Championships in purely a spectator fashion either-- it separates you by another degree from the life of the competition. I love FIRST and I love competition, and I hate seeing people complaining about teams that are, essentially, the majority of FIRST teams mucking up the finals. FIRST isn't a science fair, but it also isn't a basketball tournament. Sporting events are not designed for upward mobility, but by its nature, FIRST has to be. You don't change culture by putting down eighty percent of your teams.

I'm going to step down from my soapbox now. I don't believe anything I've written should be construed as disparging competitive teams, and I don't intend it to. If it comes of that way to you, I'll do my best to discuss it with you in a gracious and professional manner.