[Dan Richardson]

Hrmm I have to say Powers your post did sound very selfish but let me correct a few things, please don't make it out to sound like we are an unfortunate team.. tho we are probably in the poor category we make the best of it and have an amazing mentor sponsorship

there are a lot of teams that do not have access to the mentorship and machine shop and tools we do. You can't take this for granted especially when our robot performs so well. I understand you feel shafted and we are doing everything we can to get that last trip for you seniors but it might not work out how we hoped.

2nd let me clarify a few things so that we kinda don't sound stuck up to the rest of chief delphi.

Our school gave us some initial support but only because we aren't allowed to fund raise. We are only allowed to ask imediate relations ( at both schools in our group for money ) for help, and aren't allowed to do most traditional fund raising ( thus we have many creative ways.. but most were developed to late for this year ) But the fact of the matter is, we weren't allowed to fund raise they basically hung us out to dry.

Our team scraped together every bit of its 8000 total ( which came from the family's pitching together and pulling some strings ) budget for this year ( that counts all parts, registration and travel ) All money for travel mainly comes out of pocket, now being 3 hours from orlando this was norm. not a big deal. We all just hitched a ride and paid cheap hotel rates and we just brought everything with us to regionals and nationals, we've never been in the situation we are in now.

Right now if we go to nationals every member on the team must pay about $500 ( because our team is to small to justify a bus.. and the mentors .. bah always the mentors... want to fly and not bus ) This is an EXTREME amount for any family to pay. I know for one being the main bot operator on the team ( Powers is main arm operator ) I don't know where I'll get the money. So contrary to popular belief ( at most regionals ) tho 710 is 2 private schools, we get the shaft constantly and must pay for almost everything. My school does everything they can, we just aren't very affluent and whatever we can get donated to us.. imediately goes to athletics or our new campus. So we know what its like to live with little.

Now I'm not going to scold Powers comopletely because even tho his comments were out of place, and should have been phrased differently, I believe there are many out there including myself ( on his team and all ) that know the feeling. It might even be a bit more frustrating for us, because we weren't allowed to do much fundraising, and we know that Powers school could drop 20k in the blink of an eye and wouldn't phase them a bit. But thats the nature of the politicaly inclined money Beast, and tho Its selfish to want some of that money for your own so you don't have to pay 500 out of pocket to go to nationals, I'm not gonna sit and complain because thats not what these forums are for.

I'm just trying to straighten some things up and John please realize, tho we don't have much, we have a heck of a lot more than some people in this competition. We can have envy for some of these 3/4 million dollar budgets or we can say " Heck, my bot is competing with yours and we have 1/100 your budget."

IMO you can never be grateful enough for what we actually get to compete in here, and tho sometimes we feel shafted, and there are those that are better finacially equipped, we come away with the same experience and never let that be tainted.

Just remember what Dean said, this is never really going to be fair.

Dan