[waialua359]

After 17 seasons in FIRST, I wanted to mention several teams from our earlier years that provided inspiration with respect to their overall program (engineering, outreach, and program management).

If I forget some off the top of my head, sorry in advance. These are just the teams that I had contact with and/or saw personally while at regional competitions and the Championships early on.
16, 25, 33, 45, 60, 64 (no longer around), 67, 71, 103, 111, 118, 148, 217, 233, 254, 330, 341, 365, 368, 469, 842, 987, and 1114.
All of these teams were awesome from the beginnings of their respective program. We marveled at their engineering feats as well as the non-robot aspects of their programs.

This would be difficult to do today or in recent years simply because their are just too many to mention.
A rule of thumb for me personally is taking away something new, neat or creative of the participating robots from every tournament we attend and from the teams that we meet.
Our program is where it is today, because we always learned from the best and tried to emulate in some form or fashion what they have done. Being from Hawaii has many disadvantages.....but having the opportunity to participate in so many different regional competitions has definitely helped us overcome the challenges.