[martin417]

I think this discussion about "this is wrong" or "un-gracious" is silly. The rules are published at the beginning of the season. The goal of this, or any competition is to win. Do you think Dean Kamen will give away the rights to the Segway to be "Gracious"? If you don't plan to do all you can do, within the rules, to win, then why play? I realize that Gracious Professionalism is the heart of FIRST, but as I have said before, if we weren't supposed to compete, we wouldn't keep score. If we weren't out to win, I know I wouldn't have many kids interested in joining the team. The better the team does, the more students are interested joining. Is that not the goal of FIRST? To get get kids involved? Like most people, kids are interested in wining traditions. Look at football. Teams that win a lot have a lot of fans. In FIRST, those fans become involved in the team, and maybe in engineering and technology. The reason I am involved in FIST, and plan to stay involved, even though both my kids will have moved on to college, is to inspire more american kids to become engineers. At my place of business, less than 50% of the engineers are native born Americans. I am not knocking those talented foriegn born engineers, but the fact that we have to import talent because we don't have enough of our own tells me that there is a fundamental flaw in the way we inspire kids.

I, for one, will continue to inspire the kids that are on our team to do everything they can do (within the rules) to win. If winning gets more kids involved, and therefore interested in science and technology, then it is, by definition, within the spirit of FIRST.