Originally Posted by Don Rotolo
Well, you has some of the judges, not exactly on your side but suitably impressed to give you a Judge's award. This demonstrates that they saw something good in you, and that's good. Excellent, in fact.
I think what hasn't been mentioned yet is that FIRST is not about the robot.
You may hear that often, but that statement takes some thinking to really "get".
I mean, it IS a robot competition, right? Yes, but it is about neither robots nor competition. It is about Inspiring people, especially young people, to recognize Science and Technology as being critically important to the success of human life on this planet. You may hear people "oh, save the planet!", but truth is, Earth doesn't need saving, it'll do just fine no matter what we humans do - it is the HUMANS who need saving!
Rookie All-Star Award: This is about the team that shows their understanding of the ideals of FIRST, and it has nothing to do with the robot. Does your team reach out to the community to inspire them about science & technology? Do you reach out to other teams to help them? Do you help the community (food bank, flood cleanup, homeless shelter, girl scouts, etc.)? Do you help start FLL and FTC teams? Do you get newspaper and other media coverage of FIRST and science & technology?
The list could go on and on, but the point is this: Did you do all of those things? Did you do any of those things? If not, then you need to start doing it.
1676 has won all sorts of awards, but RAS is the one of which we remain most proud - and that's after we went completely undefeated at VCU this past weekend (not even a tie). Why? Because the FIRST community recognized our efforts, as rookies (!) in helping other teams get onto the field to compete. We were lucky that our robot didn't break, so we (eager to continue building robots) went to several other teams in the regional and helped them fix their robots - loaning tools, parts, hardware and (most importantly) people.
There was one team (in 2005) where Thursday morning I heard one team member say "Aw, we ain't never gonna get this thing working anyway, let's just go home". Their robot had some serious issues. Four of our team members went to their pits and helped them rebuild their robot. You can't imagine the look of pride and satisfaction on their faces when they finally passed inspection Thursday evening!
The judges took note of our 'giving back', and believe that's what won us the RAS, over some very impressive teams. By the way, I think we finished 58th out of 61 teams that year, so i'm pretty sure we did not win for our robot's performance.
Does this help, Ed?
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