[David Lame]

In my opinion, the phrase "world championship" is pretty loud all by itself, but that is only one consideration out of many that goes into how to structure a season for FRC.

However, the focus on winning is something else entirely. I think it's vital. One of our mentors invited a couple of members of our local city council to our last district event this year. They had never seen an event, and didn't know what to expect. High school kids. Robots. Some sort of science fair-ish sort of thing, maybe?

Instead they got First Robotics, and they were blown away, just like I was last year when I stumbled onto First. And what was it that was so mind blowing? It was the passion, the intensity. The amazing cheer that went up when....a can with a noodle in it was placed on a stack of totes!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the crowd goes wild!!!!!!!!!!!!

That intensity makes us what we are, and it's fueled by a desire to win, and it's something that inspires not just our teams, but the rest of the community that we really want to inspire.

As with every high school sport, we have to balance our desire to win with the more important goal of teaching important life lessons to our kids who participate, especially among the teams who are not destined to take home the blue banners, but the desire to win is a very important part of First.