[Dan Petrovic]

I don't think there is a good way to make FIRST fair.

A team is how the members want to make it. If the team has the enthusiasm and work ethic to be successful, then they will. If a team really doesn't want to do much, just sort of slack off and wait for build season to argue about everything, then that team wont be successful.

FIRST can't do much to make the playing field level. It comes from the team members. It starts with teamwork. If you don't have a team that works well together, then nothing will be accomplished. This can be solved by getting together as a team and doing... something! It doesn't matter, just get out and do something together. A lot of time is wasted when arguements came up. That happened to us this year. There was an arguement about whether we should shoot or score in the side goals, then another arguement about the shooter design.

Arguements lead to wasted time, frustration, and poor products of one's work because of that frustration.

Communication is another big one. Communcation isn't entirely being able to talk. There's more to that. Communication is rendered to just someone babbling if no one is listening. Team members need to know how to listen to eachother. If the controls and mechanical aren't on the same page about what's going on, 6 weeks into it, everyone will be cursing at everything.

FIRST can do everything in it's power to make the game as fair as possible, but it's useless if a team can't get along.

The only true way to make it fair is for the powers that be in FIRST hold our hands through it all, and that's no fun.

Okay, I'm hungry. Bye.

-Dan!