I'm still trying to process what happened last weekend. Wow, what a ride!
148 - I was overjoyed when we got to your team on our pick list. I've never had the pleasure of working with you before this year, and to partner with y'all back-to-back at SVR and CMP was a real treat. You have the deepest mentor team I've ever worked with, Jeff, Kevin, Colin, Ricky, Adrienne, Jay, and all the mentors were amazing! And your students are really a top-notch bunch, focused, committed and hugely invested in the program. Consider me your #1 fan after this weekend. Also, I'll be in Dallas this weekend. I'm hugely tempted to try to get over to Greenville
862 - Like has been said a gazillion times already, how were you available as the last pick in the draft?!? I remember inspecting your robot early Thursday morning and being impressed by the build quality and simplicity of your machine. Getting to talk with a few of your students and mentors even before Saturday afternoon, it became obvious that your team is made up of some of the most Gracious people in FIRST. In strategy sessions, your willingness to do just about anything asked of you was inspiring. Not to mention you did everything extremely well! Thanks for rounding out our dream alliance.
1717, 1310, 2056, 67, 1983, 359, 3539 - You all inspire me immensely. I loved having so many awesome teams in Curie, it meant less of a commute to see a bunch of amazing robots
We did have a fairly advantageous qualification schedule, and that meant being to play on the same side of the glass with quite a few of you. Thank you for continuing to hold a level of excellence that myself and my students strive towards. 1717 especially, I love your team. The seniors every year are a joy to talk to. I know at least one of your seniors is going to UC Davis next year, I told her to look into helping out 1678
Go Ags!
1678 - I am so unbelievably proud of you all! I don't even know where to start. Each student stepped it up a notch at CMP. The entire team was focused and efficient, debugging issues and making fixes on the fly. I think there were at least three mechanical failures during Saturday afternoon that would take any normal person an hour to fix, but because of careful planning and ridiculously talented students, the robot was up and operational at the start of every match. The mentor base that you are building is growing every year, and I'm excited for what that means for the years to come! Steve, thanks for everything you have done for 1678. You haven't missed a beat since I graduated, and it shows with where the team is now. Keep it up, friend!
Lastly, thank you 1678 for the honor of having me with your pit and drive team on Einstein. It was an unreal experience that I won't forget anytime soon.
DampRobot, to answer your question, I mentored 1678 through college, and have tried to stay involved where I can since graduating in 2011. Luckily, 1662 takes Sunday's off, so I was able to visit 1678 many weekends while maintaining my responsibilities as Lead Mentor of 1662. However, I had very little involvement with the design of 1678's incredible machine, I mostly showed up for moral support and as another person to bounce ideas off of. They are an incredibly talented team with a lot of momentum moving forward!
-Mike