[Billfred]

Originally Posted by 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.

Glad to hear it.

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?

Careful, subjective measurements taken over sporadic periods of time rarely tell the whole story.

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?

Could be any number of reasons. Perhaps they've got more mechanical mentors and not as many mechanically-inclined students. Perhaps they've got students off in search of parts. Perhaps they just happen to have adults that know what they're doing, and are in the process of teaching the kids. I don't know, and you don't know.

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.

There is a reason it is known as the FIRST Robotics Competition. There is a competition, and I expect the other teams present to give it their best shot to succeed in it. If a team has the resources to compete at multiple events, good for them. I can only hope for the day that we're at that level, but you can bet I'll be working on that in the off-season.

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.

Dare I note that there are several NASA teams who have yet to bring home the gold this season? Neither 116 nor 118 have done so thus far. Even 359, a beautiful machine which dropped the jaw of every single member of Capital Robotics at Cheapeake, hasn't made it through the finals.

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.

Then why is it an issue for folks to compete to the best of their ability?

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'm from 1618. We finished 46th of 60 at Chesapeake, 3-6-0. We got beat by some of the best teams in the field, and I know we were on a few pick lists. We didn't get picked, and it stung--but it lit a fire underneath our kids, new and old. Last season, we got lucky and slipped into the eighth alliance captain slot, only to get stomped in QF1-1 to the tune of 264-0. Didn't faze me one bit. Coincidentally, I'm also an alumnus of 1293, the team that finished next to last at Palmetto with only a single win to their credit for the whole 2008 season. I spoke with the head coach of their team at Palmetto, and he wasn't shaken up a bit. Nor was anyone else on the team, for that matter. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. Ideally, you learn something from the experience either way.

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.

George Wallace, coach of 1902, once told me that FIRST is like pizza. You and I may like different toppings, but in the end it's still delicious pizza. I don't mind if a team walks away with their third/fourth/fifth/sixth blue banner in a season. Why? They've done something right that we haven't. If we keep learning from our mistakes, and from the mistakes and successes of others, then our day will come on the field--a process that is accelerated when we don't tell other teams to bring anything less than their A-game.