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Re: What are your victories?
I loved reading every part of this thread. It is so inspirational. As the lead mentor of a team that has had a fair amount of success in the past few years, I can still remember very clearly being in the position of never having made it out of the quarter finals at regionals and never having won any kind of award.
What I love about FIRST is that any team can set goals and when you achieve those goals you are victorious. This year, there is one moment that stands out in this regard and brought me to tears. It was at the Central Valley Regional and involved Team 5529. a rookie team from Visalia, CA. The team was getting really frustrated with their robot's performance and, at one point, one of the students said to me, "we're just never going to be as good as those other teams - our robot just isn't good enough!". We worked with the team to improve their elevator and then spent a ton of time on the practice field to get their driver and operator more experience. We set a goal of scoring a stack of three yellow totes onto one yellow tote on the step. I emphasized that this was a goal they could achieve and would be worth far more points than any amount of grey totes that they could place on the scoring platform in one match. During one of their qualification matches the drive team spent virtually the whole match carefully stacking up the three yellow totes and then during the closing seconds of the match managed to complete the coop-stack. The crowd went crazy and I'm even tearing up as I write this.
The team accomplished this feat again in a later qualification match. They then went on to win the Rookie Inspiration Award and a trip to St. Louis, surely another great victory for the team.
After this success, I saw a completely different attitude among the students on the team because they had accomplished an important goal that they had set. I am so looking forward to playing with 5529 again as they are joining us in the Newton division.
So for every team out there, however successful or unsuccessful you have been so far in competition, set reasonable goals and try to accomplish those goals. When you accomplish your goals, you are victorious.
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Lead Mentor - Team 1678 (2005-Present)
2013 Curie Division Champions (with 148 and 862)
2014 Newton Division Champions (with 1114, 1640 and 5136)
2015 World Champions (with 118, 1671 and 5012)
2016 Hopper Division Champions (with 148, 364 and 2990)
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