[xForceDee]

I'll offer my two cents as a former member of young team. Keep in mind as a prelude that I have only known of FIRST's existence for 2 years. This will be a hindrance on my overall experience with the program, but it will also allow me to offer perspective as a part of a rookie team.

At the start of the 2012 season (my team's rookie year), none of our members or mentors had any FIRST experience whatsoever. Our shop consisted of a table saw, band saw, drill press, lathe and some hand tools. I say this to show we had plenty of tools to build a quality robot. We attempted to construct a design that could shoot and manipulate the bridge. Neither of these mechanisms ended up working by competition. So we went through the games with a chunk of metal on a drive train that was less than perfect to say the least. As a part of the drive team, I would have to tell our alliance partners that all we could do was move and get out of the way and maybe help go for a double balance if one of them could lower the bridge. We could not play defense that year because of the stupid bump, and we couldn't help offensively either. Basically, we would drive to the corner and wait for the match to end most of the time. Needless to say, we ended up 58th in the competition. It was still cool to see all the robots, but the competing itself was far less than enjoyable.

Fast forward to the 2013 season. We all have 1 year of experience under our belt and I came across ri3d. We watched them build a strong shooter design and we mimicked it with success. At competition, we could accurately score in the two point goal anywhere from 8 to 16 times in a match. Furthermore, we also added some plywood to block disks. This time, when asked what could do by alliance partners, we had something to say. Competition was substantially more fun. We were seeded 19th (up nearly 40 slots!) and got picked by the number 1 alliance as their 3rd pick.

So what does this mean? Well, the point could be made that we would have had this success simply due to the year of experience. However, the fact that we were still crunched for time (finishing the building on bag day) suggests that without the immediate inspiration, we could not have finished in time. So my point is this, ri3d helped us build a better robot which in turn, made competition more fun. This enjoyment is what will drive students to pursue science and engineering. For this reason I think ri3d is a great thing. Obviously, FIRST was a popular and fun for lots of people before ri3d, but I think a fair point can be made that the project has made the experience better for more teams.

I want to say that I don't think those of you with lots of experience are wrong in what you have said, in fact I hold your thoughts with incredibly high regard. However, I fear sometimes as time increases between the present and when someone started, some sight of just how hard it can be to field a functioning robot for a young team is lost.