[Depreciation]

To start off I would like to say FIRST has been the best program I have ever participated in. I have learned more during my years in it then I have in anyhting else I have ever done, all while having the most fun I have ever had. On the other hand there is one major, consistent problem I have seen. FIRST is a high school robotics competition, so why are there so many teams that seem to have more adult mentors than students? why are there so many teams that seem that whenever in their pits, in pictures, or during time outs, there adults are the ones working on the robots, and they have a number of the adults gathered around the robot with one or two high school students? Well these same teams are the ones that year after year have highly superior robots to any other team. In a competition that prides itself in its "gracious profesionalism" there should not be teams that year after year just completely dominate all the way to the win, but not even at just one regional but sometimes two or three in one year, I find that completely rediculous and definitely NOT GP.

I know im going to hear many argue that FIRST is not about winning, well just stop being so cliche and understand that everyone still desires to do well and no one appreciates working so hard just to have some NASA engineered robot come along every year and beat them without even a slight hope of winning. I understand that the glory of winning eventually fades, and in the end it really is the experience that matters, but it is still a competition. Students spend six hard weeks building and working on something that they want to see succeed just as much as the teams im speaking of do. Its not exactly a great experience or in any way encouraging to put all that effort into something, just to go to the competitions every year to see which team super power is there to dominate them this year.

I think there are many teams that need to think about this and change the way they're team is run, and for the ones who dont, go and horde up all those trophys and banners each year, but make sure you have plenty of fun, because no one else is.