[mathking]

As someone who coaches both a robotics team and a cross-country team, I would argue that they can teach many of the same things. I enjoy coaching both teams. (I have also coached track, soccer and basketball.) And I have had cross-country and track athletes, soccer players, football players, golfers, tennis players, baseball players and volleyball players on my FIRST team. As with many things in life, how you do it makes all the difference. The first step is your approach. In this I am guided by the words of a good friend from quite a few years ago: "As a coach, I need to teach my athletes. If they haven't learned over the course of the season, I haven't done a good job."

As for sports not adding anything of value, please do not discount physical fitness as an important added value. Americans are particularly unfit on the average, and being on a sports team can be a big help in teaching kids how to make healthy life choices. Sports can also teach you how to respond challenges. It takes just as much hard work to be good at a sport as it does to be good at FIRST. Like FIRST, some people will be naturally better at some aspects of sports than other people, but everyone gets better by working at it. You know, the more I think about it, the benefits earned and lessons learned in FIRST and cross-country are remarkably similar.

None of this should be construed as wanting FIRST to be more like the win at all costs ideal which has permeated too much of our sporting culture in the world. But please don't fall into the trap of feeling superior just because you participate in FIRST or of denigrating other athletes because you don't like there sports. One of the reasons I like cross-country and track is the fact that you can't control how fast your opponents run. All you can do is run your fastest. And most athletes measure their success in a season by how much they improved over the course of the season. You also tend to run against the same people several times a year, sometimes as many as 7 or 8 times. This lends itself to a very friendly, almost graciously professional atmosphere at meets. Runners congratulate each other after runs.

Good sportsmanship is something that FIRST tries to foster. And most sports teams at the high school level try to as well. This is not just at the high school level. After the Olympic 1500 meter race in 2004, Hicham el-Guerrouj was kneeling on the track after winning the gold medal. Bernard Lagat, who won the silver, came over to give him a hug of congratulations. Have any of you ever seen the football (soccer) tradition of exchanging jerseys after a hard fought game?

So I guess my point is that whether you do FIRST or some other sport (I guess that answers as to my opinion on the question at hand) you can do it well or not. So choose to do it well and get as much as you can from what you do.