[Edxu]

In my Grade 9 (Freshman) year, I attended the World Championships in 2013 as a kid who really didn’t know what he was getting into, who wasn’t really interested in engineering or computers outside of video games. When I got there, I then understood the sheer size of the FIRST Program, and how many people it’s reached.
During my time off from scouting, I walked around team’s pits, trying to visit the teams from places that I’ve never been to (shoutout to 27, 111, 118) . I’ve traveled around the States before as a tourist, but I never once imagined that in almost every place that I’ve been to, there are a ton of FIRST teams that I never saw. That really opened my eyes to how FIRST has spread. I visited the sponsor area, where I saw rows upon rows of opportunities and awesome exhibitions, all using the same skills and thought process applied in FIRST.
Two years later, my passion for FIRST has led me to love being at competition and talking to teams, and fortunately, my job at competitions lets me do just that. I love talking and learning about the robots and teams that have come from far away.
From experience, I’ve learned that the teams from the South approach the game in a much different way than we in the North do, and I think that if Championships was split into two region-locked areas, I wouldn’t get that same experience of learning their way of thinking, as well as losing the experience of sharing our method of approach.

And from a purely selfish standpoint, the Californian robots are all really cool and I'd be losing the chance to see them in real life.