Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
I know we will never see eye-to-eye on this, but it's not all about winning for 422 (look at our track record if you don't believe me!). However, I think a key component of FRC is the available pursuit of it. There are bad apples that can spoil this key component: the hyper-competitive veterans that can intentionally or inadvertently intimidate weaker teams. That's not a great tool for inspiration. Yet when we set our 10 year goal my senior year to be one of the best teams in FIRST by 2022, that didn't mean we had to be one of those teams. The pursuit of that kind of goal though gets people on and around the team to focus on this idea of accomplishment actively while the work we put into that goal makes the program better (more resources, better documentation, happier students, more satisfied mentors, more engaged school).
Looking past that, the move doesn't make a lot of sense when you pair it up with other decisions the organization is making. Why are we making games focused on robots that require a lot of engineering? Why are we making the Chairman's Award even more competitive than winning an event with the robot? Why are we making tiers at lower levels of competition but dismissing making higher levels of competition? Maybe I'm overreaching but it feels like we are the runner in QWOP and the FIRST Board is pressing all the keys at once to see what happens.
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I'm not sure I can disagree with anything you posted here. I had to ask my student what QWOP was, but besides that, Will, I think you will find that you and I agree far more often than we will disagree. The Pursuit is still there. What is boils down to me personally is that this change does not affect anything my team is doing or will do in the future. We still have many goals to reach. The only thing that has changed, as of today, is geography. Change is hard. I HATE change. But one thing I learned a long time ago is that change is going to happen whether I like it or not.