[Dick Linn]

One word: "children". If my oldest hadn't gotten the word about FIRST, I probably wouldn't be here. Of course, the younger one was right there at the time (seventh grade) and has been on the team ever since. I've become the mentor for the drivetrain. Though not fancy, we've never had a single drivetrain failure in five years of competition (knock on wood). This year, the Team won a Motorola Quality Award at the VCU regional in Richmond, VA.

I hate going to meetings, but I love building stuff. There's nothing like getting it all together at the 11th hour and making a good showing at a regional competiton. And when it's over, the comraderie is just great. This year, our team had it's first engineer ( the team's co-founder) graduate from VCU, with honors. That makes it all worthwhile!