FIRST: The Varsity Sport of the Mind!

[ksafin]

Hey everyone,

This post shouldn't be too long, but if you can, I'd appreciate if you read it and listened to my quick story, and a call to action I have with it..

Last year, I was a freshman that just came to High School. Now, I came to my High School because its academics were phenomenal. It has a great IB Program, great teachers, and great classes that I was dying to take. My other option was a school with a robotics team, a computer science program, and a MSE (Math Science Engineering) program. However, that school was too far from me to attend.

So, I came into this school as a Computer Science kid. I loved programming, I did it daily for fun and as a hobby. I made websites. I made websites for every club in the school, in fact. But there comes a point where I wanted to do more and get more involved in what I enjoyed. So I started a club; Programming Club. We met once weekly and just programmed, learned about programming, and did fun things. It didn't garner too much attention. So aside from the fact that I liked programming, above all I wanted to get others to enjoy it as well. So then comes my Sophomore Year.

Sophomore year, I discovered FIRST. I read about it online, I had never heard of it before. Excited, I told my dad and we were set on adding it as part of the club. So, we jumped into FTC. This was my first ever robotics experience, and it was thrilling. We built a small bot that had a forklift at the front of it, a conveyor in it, and could pick up balls, put them in crates, stack crates, etc. We won 2nd place at our regional, and the PTC Creo Design Award. I was EXCITED, especially that we, as a rookie team, were able to do this, and how much fun it was.

So then came FRC. These past two or so months, have, as it has been said many times before, "the hardest fun" I ever had. Our school, which had never had any engineering backbone to it, now had FRC. People were engaged. We had 15 regular team members who attended often and enjoyed it as much as I do. Most of them were freshman, although we do have a sprinkle of every grade.

My point is, I want to get people in our school as excited about FIRST, Technology, Science, and Engineering as many other FIRST teams, schools, and communities have been successful at. We're doing a lot of things to try and get our school and the community to get engaged, but part of our attempts have been to have FIRST Robotics become a Varsity sport at the school. We've heard it many times before, FIRST is the Varsity Sport of the mind, so lets make it so.

I hope you will help us in our mission to do so by signing our online petition. It takes just one minute, and it will help us spread the news of our existence (Team 3992 & FIRST) to our school, surrounding schools, and the community.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and helping us, I deeply appreciate it.

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by ksafin

Hey everyone,


Thank you for taking the time to read this and helping us, I deeply appreciate it.

Done. We have some resources and a video on our webpage that our students used to get varsity standing for our team. Feel free to use any of it that helps, or contact us if we can help! Good Luck! http://bedfordexpress.org/varsity

[ksafin]

That page was very helpful!

We'll definitely be using a lot of your resources, thanks so much for sharing!

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by ksafin

That page was very helpful!

We'll definitely be using a lot of your resources, thanks so much for sharing!

Glad it is of help. I posted on our FB to get people to sign. Hope it helps!

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by Debbie

Glad it is of help. I posted on our FB to get people to sign. Hope it helps!

Haha great, thanks so much!

I applaud you, a 2nd year FIRSTer (FTC and FRC), for doing this at your high school. We are working on a similar thing at our school, though we are making it a class, with credits.

PLEASE keep us updated on how your petition goes. I'm +1 for it.

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I applaud you, a 2nd year FIRSTer (FTC and FRC), for doing this at your high school. We are working on a similar thing at our school, though we are making it a class, with credits.

PLEASE keep us updated on how your petition goes. I'm +1 for it.

Thanks so much! I really appreciate it.

And wow, that sounds like a brilliant idea! I may even look into that as well.

I will do so
We're hoping to present the petition to our principal who will be attending the regional, after we get all the teams present to sign hehe

[wireties]

Done! Keep up the good work!

HTH

[PayneTrain]

I like your spunk, kid!

In all seriousness, I encourage you to spread this infectious positive energy with everyone you meet. You can get the strangest people to show up to your competitions, from school jocks to local mechanics and clergy members. It's bizarre, but it's great to see them light up in front of you when they watch the competition and walk through the pits.

I hope you can get RAS and come to St Louis so we can all hear and see more! Try to hold a pep rally at your school after the season to hype up the program.

[Jujubee]

Now this is what I call getting inspired! I really hope you guys are able to get the credit you deserve =]

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I like your spunk, kid!

In all seriousness, I encourage you to spread this infectious positive energy with everyone you meet. You can get the strangest people to show up to your competitions, from school jocks to local mechanics and clergy members. It's bizarre, but it's great to see them light up in front of you when they watch the competition and walk through the pits.

I hope you can get RAS and come to St Louis so we can all hear and see more! Try to hold a pep rally at your school after the season to hype up the program.

Thanks! We definitely are trying; We're trying to get our principal to attend, other engineers and people we've met in our path during the season, as well as students from school.

Our principal suggested a pep rally, so it may happen!

I hope we can go to St.Louis as well!

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by Jujubee

Now this is what I call getting inspired! I really hope you guys are able to get the credit you deserve =]

Thanks!

[tim-tim]

I have also completed the survey; and posted the link on our Facebook page as well.

Please keep us informed with the progress.

[Robobee93]

Done! Good luck!

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by Robobee93

Done! Good luck!

Originally Posted by tim-tim

I have also completed the survey; and posted the link on our Facebook page as well.

Please keep us informed with the progress.

Thanks guys! Will do, Tim!