Most Memorable First Moment

[Alivia]

I am sure this topic has been used time and time again, but sitting here at Ball State University, I had some free time on my hands and thought I'd bring it up again.

Since I've come to college, I've been really missing my old team, and find myself reminiscing about past robotics seasons. I was wondering what all of your most memorable moments from FIRST are--moments that are forever etched in your memory that you can't help but smile when you think about. It doesn't have to be from this past season, but from any year. What is the one moment you will never forget?

For me, it's probably a combination of all the pep-talks and encouraging words I received from all the mentors I worked with, but especially the film crew mentors. I will never forget the advice I got during 2007 nationals from my mentor. I was on the main floor, taking pictures of all the goings-on, and as the day went on, I kept getting more sad because it was my last year/event on Team Hammond. My mentor noticed this, and gave me a peptalk. He said, "I know you're feeling sad right now. And you have every reason to be. But if you feel sad now, you're going to miss out on feeling excited and happy about what's happening. You won't be able to take in the moment. So, you have two choices. You can either stay sad and miss out now, or be sad later, and take in all the wonderful experiences there are here. It's your choice. But I think I know what you're gonna chose." And thanks to his words of advice, I lived up the moment and had an awesome time.

What moment will you remember forever? And don't worry about sounding long-winded. Look at my post!

[AndyB]

Winning Regional Chairman's at Wisconsin last year. It was just such a shock to us.

[Pavan Dave]

I don't have any specific moments. I have a few that stand out more but there is no "most memorable" moment for me. One of them was in 2006 Atlanta, I learned that in the face of all that is wrong, you need to have a bit of faith and to not over react. At Bayou '07 I ran to our robot which was getting ready to play and I had to put on one of those blue pins that drivers have to try to fix some controls problem. As soon as my mentor and I fixed the problem we were relieved, but the excitement and the pressure and the adrenaline rush of just having to do your best in less than a minutes time was something that nothing can beat. Soon afterwards at the Lone Star regional, I was jumping up and down because I couldn't sit still in the eliminations because many of the matches were very close and one of my mentors kept saying something along the lines of "in the end everything everything will turn out OK."

And then how could I forget IRI 2007 and the gracious professionalism and teamwork shown by many people from different teams coming together to give Andy a special treat!

[AdamHeard]

Finals at San Diego this year was nice.... first time since '03 that happened.

It was also nice giving 330 their only loss of the regional after they beat us so many matches before (preship scrimmage,and qualifying matches at LA/SD). They're good people though... definately deserved the two regionals & Division win.

[Billfred]

The one I'll remember from this season: watching our team go through alliance selection as the #12 seed. Since we had no scoring ability whatsoever, our only realistic hope was to become an alliance captain. The sixth alliance made their pick, which left two teams above us: 804 and 1746. At this point, I figure we're seeing backup duty (for the second straight year in my case, as 1293 found itself there the year before)...until 804 picks 1746.

If our operator down on the far side of the field heard my shout, I wouldn't be surprised.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

The night we finished our 2007 robot and realized how awesome it was.

Most of my team considers our 2005 & 2006 robots failures. They weren't much to be proud of But the 2007 robot was amazing. That first night restored a huge amount of confidence to our team. It was the first time in years that we could be proud of what we had built.

[Grant Cox]

I originally had started to write something about being the new driver as a first year student, but about halfway through I thought of another unforgettable experience. Detroit regional 2007.

After being defeated in a very rough and aggravating quarterfinal, I was pretty much devastated. Being the new driver, I felt like I had totally let the team down, so I just went outside and sat by myself for a little bit. When I came back in I still couldn't bring myself to sit with the team, so I watched some matches from the TVs in the pit. Last year's driver found me, gave a little cheerup talk, and we wnet to sit with some friends from team 469 and cheered on their alliance as they went on to become regional finalists.

Cheering with them for the Guerrillas was so much fun, I had completely forgotten about how upset I was earlier. However, the excitement was just beginning. When the announcer got about halfway through his speech about the Chairmans' winner, I could see our 4 Chairman's writers start getting all antsy and excited up in the stands; obviously he had said something from their presentation. Sure enough, we had won the Regional Chairman's award. Greatest feeling ever, as we celebrated and hugged and cried and everything afterwards.

While we were celebrating, one of our seniors had been down using the scoring computer for something. Suddenly, he came running up to us, screaming "I GOT INTO MIT!! I GOT INTO MIT!!!" I guess they posted their acceptances online at noon that day, so he used the computer to check it out. It was the perfect end to that day.


I have some others from Atlanta, strategizing with Andy Baker or watching that incredible ramp in the Einstein finals or relaxing outside between matches, but the whole sequence of events at Detroit was just incredible, I don't think I'll ever forget it.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by GeeForce

I originally had started to write something about being the new driver as a first year student, but about halfway through I thought of another unforgettable experience. Detroit regional 2007.

After being defeated in a very rough and aggravating, I was pretty much devastated. Being the new driver, I felt like I had totally let the team down, so I just went outside and sat by myself for a little bit. When I came back in I still couldn't bring myself to sit with the team, so I watched some matches from the TVs in the pit. Last year's driver found me, gave a little cheerup talk, and we wnet to sit with some friends from team 469 and cheered on their alliance as they went on to become regional finalists.

Cheering with them for the Guerrillas was so much fun, I had completely forgotten about how upset I was earlier. However, the excitement was just beginning. When the announcer got about halfway through his speech about the Chairmans' winner, I could see our 4 Chairman's writers start getting all antsy and excited up in the stands; obviously he had said something from their presentation. Sure enough, we had won the Regional Chairman's award. Greatest feeling ever, as we celebrated and hugged and cried and everything afterwards.

While we were celebrating, one of our seniors had been down using the scoring computer for something. Suddenly, he came running up to us, screaming "I GOT INTO MIT!! I GOT INTO MIT!!!" I guess they posted their acceptances online at noon that day, so he used the computer to check it out. It was the perfect end to that day.

Dang... that's a lot of exciting stuff for one day.

[Bomberofdoom]

Originally Posted by GeeForce

I originally had started to write something about being the new driver as a first year student, but about halfway through I thought of another unforgettable experience. Detroit regional 2007.

After being defeated in a very rough and aggravating quarterfinal, I was pretty much devastated. Being the new driver, I felt like I had totally let the team down, so I just went outside and sat by myself for a little bit. When I came back in I still couldn't bring myself to sit with the team, so I watched some matches from the TVs in the pit. Last year's driver found me, gave a little cheerup talk, and we wnet to sit with some friends from team 469 and cheered on their alliance as they went on to become regional finalists.

Cheering with them for the Guerrillas was so much fun, I had completely forgotten about how upset I was earlier. However, the excitement was just beginning. When the announcer got about halfway through his speech about the Chairmans' winner, I could see our 4 Chairman's writers start getting all antsy and excited up in the stands; obviously he had said something from their presentation. Sure enough, we had won the Regional Chairman's award. Greatest feeling ever, as we celebrated and hugged and cried and everything afterwards.

While we were celebrating, one of our seniors had been down using the scoring computer for something. Suddenly, he came running up to us, screaming "I GOT INTO MIT!! I GOT INTO MIT!!!" I guess they posted their acceptances online at noon that day, so he used the computer to check it out. It was the perfect end to that day.


I have some others from Atlanta, strategizing with Andy Baker or watching that incredible ramp in the Einstein finals or relaxing outside between matches, but the whole sequence of events at Detroit was just incredible, I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Wow.
This is very similar to what happened to me in the Israeli Regional, but it wasn't this exciting, dangit!

[Tottanka]

Foe me itgetting the result of SM 1.2 lof Aim Gigh's Israeli regional.
We were an all rookie alliance, with me as alliance captain.
The reult of SM 1.1 was in our favour. The second match we scored only 1 canter goal and didnt get up to any ramp. It was a very low scoring, defensive match. The final result was 5-4 in our favor, we were in the finals, and as far as i know, the only alliance ever in any FIRST regional, with all-rookie teams. I couldn't stop jumping and hugging everyone for about 2 minutes. After those 2 minutes i went to shake hands with all the driving team of the opposing alliance.
It was amazing!

[Gboehm]

For me the start of the 2007 started on a downer, because I lost a very dear friend of mine in December. So once we started building it was nice to have a distraction. We were coming off a really lucky win from the Cal Games, so we took what we learned there and realized that defense could do well in Rack 'n' Roll. So we named our robot after my late friend. We ended up with a little aluminum box on wheels. At SVR we competed as hard as we could, and at the end of Saturday I saw us in the top 5 in standings. I looked to my seconed in command and I remember saying "We might pull this off..." After our last qualifying round I remember watching the board, seeing if we would drop down, and when I saw the final standings we were sitting third. So we picked 190 who were seeded below us (which was funny since our mentor went to WPI many years ago) Then it came around to our pick again, and I asked 190's captain what she thought, and she said 1280... So I picked our schools biggest rival in everything else to be our alliance partner (that was fun to explain to our principal, when he asked "Did we beat San Ramon?!") At the end of the day, we couldn't believe it. But that truely was my happiest moment of my Senior year, and my most memorable moment in FIRST.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Gboehm

So I picked our schools biggest rival in everything else to be our alliance partner (that was fun to explain to our principal, when he asked "Did we beat San Ramon?!")

Funny thing, that culture changing concept, isn't it?

[Dreadfrost]

This is easy to answer.

This year at the 2006 Waterloo regional we knew our rivals 1114 and only one other team were our compitition at winning our first regional chairmans award. Our team had only 4 seasoned members. So our entire chairmans team was full of nOObs, myself being one of them.

At the engineering inspiration award we were pumped hoping for this as our ticket to Atlanta, however team 1114 won it. At this point our team was dissapointed and then someone said "oh my god, oh my god look at Karthik guys!!" It was almost creepy becasue he was staring straight at us with this little grin. At this point Hafize grabbed my shoulder...no like clenched it as if she was having birth. And anyone with 2 sections of our stand could hear her almost yelping with excitement while we were going "QUIET HAFIZE LISTEN TO OUR AMAZING SPEECH!" Once Karthik finished listing our accomplishments and such we went and claimed our award.

NOTE: we realized after that the other team won another award that would have meant they wernt winning chairmans or engineering inspiration. So once 1114 was announced we should have know right away without the stare. BUt honestly though it was the stare and hafize's excitement that made this an amazing first moment.

[Alivia]

Originally Posted by Gboehm

Then it came around to our pick again, and I asked 190's captain what she thought, and she said 1280... So I picked our schools biggest rival in everything else to be our alliance partner (that was fun to explain to our principal, when he asked "Did we beat San Ramon?!") At the end of the day, we couldn't believe it. But that truely was my happiest moment of my Senior year, and my most memorable moment in FIRST.

FIRST definitely is inspiring in many ways, but one of the ways it inspires me the most is the way that it can bring everybody together. When I was on Team Hammond, we were composed of the four area high schools in Hammond, IN. Normally, all of the schools are HUGE rivals. However, with robotics, we all come together and form our own little family, and all the barriers that were there before are just gone.

That's just one of the amazing powers of FIRST, I guess.

[Aren_Hill]

IRI 2006
semifinal 2-2
71,1625,910 vs 25,1114,33
if you weren't there you missed the greatest first match i've ever seen.
it still would've been the greatest to me if my team wasn't in it.