After detailing our team's recent experiences to several friends, they recommended that I share the story with the CD community. Hopefully, you'll find something useful here.
There seems to be a down turn in positive posts here on Delphi. These forums are about sharing enthusiasm, ideas, and working collaboratively to promote FIRST. The country as a whole is rather stressed and whiny due to the economy. What we're seeing on Delphi is merely an extension of that national mood. I've tried to stay out of those whiny threads if I didn't think that my input would improve anything.
Many have noted that this was one of the most challenging build seasons in quite a while, probably the most challenging I've experienced in my time in FIRST. I felt less "in control" this year, but I did my best to shield my students from the stress I was feeling. Hey, I'm still stressing. My budget is shot and now I need to come up with $15K+ in the next few weeks to cover my team getting to Championships. Just means it's time to buckle down and try harder. Whine. Not me, at least not now. I don't have time to whine.
The situation is also what you make of it. I'll agree that there seems to be a slight increase in the number of vocal whiners in FIRST and here on CD. Maybe it's also part of the national trend of entitlement. People think that just because they participate, they're
entitled to a strong performance or winning. Winning takes a LOT of hard work, and not just during build season, even then a little luck always helps.
Even with the stress I'm under, this will be one of the most memorable seasons I'll ever have. After design problems, supply problems, sponsor problems, I thought we had turned out a pretty good robot. Then at our first regional we experienced a crippling bearing problem, I was just about ready to throw in the towel mid-afternoon on Friday, but we agreed to limp through the rest of Friday's qualification matches and tear into the problem. We ripped out all four swerve modules, pulled the bad bearings, came up with a shaft revision and had the machine shop modify our shafts.
Saturday morning we torn into rebuilding our machine which was in pieces in the pits. We were working like maniacs, but our spirits were now really high. One of our students had been announced as winning a $10k scholarship during opening ceremonies. Now
THAT'S what this program is all about. Even though we worked furiously, we missed 3 more qualification matches, but we wouldn't let it get us down. We sent out a driver and human player to help our partners anyway we could. We made it out for our last qualification match with almost no system checks, and a very stressed out drive team. The robot worked, but the match didn't improve our standings. We were ranked 27 out of 29 teams.
A lot of less experienced teams might have cracked and the whining would have started, but we kept to our plan. People noticed, teams noticed, and judges must have noticed. The number one and two seeds were talking to us throughout the morning while we worked. They wanted to know if we'd get finished in time, we assured them we would. They must have liked what they saw and heard, because they selected us as their alliance partner (Thanks Teams 230 & 20!!!), and we didn't let them down. 6-0-0 in eliminations. Winners. Our first ever regional win in twelve years. Stress, oh yes, more than I'd like to go through again, but it paid off in the end.
Even through all these distractions our students followed our lead and kept upbeat, letting teams know why we weren't making our matches and keeping them posted as to our progress. They also simply rocked the judges with their contagious enthusiasm.
Winning was awesome, but the highlight of the day had to be when our team was selected as the regional Engineering Inspiration Award recipient. I know we've been slowly and quietly building a strong team, but I wasn't expecting this at least not this year!
Our team also had a student selected at the regional for the Dean's List Award. Another unforgettable moment, and another reason to get to Atlanta.
So I'm in full agreement with those of you who say we should lead by example. Here's our example, I hope this helps.
Now back to finding donors and sponsors.
Whine... I don't have time to whine!
