Supporting the FIRST organization through growing pains

[Clayton Yocom]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

I'm starting to get a feeling that FIRST is turning into another robotics competition, and it's kind of saddening. Winning is not everything. People say we are all winners to lift spirits, but honestly, I do believe that those that participate in FIRST are winners. I see a lot of people losing the real meaning of FIRST and participating in it as another competition. It's a whole lot more than that....a whole lot.

Please don't look at the complaining as a part of the competition. Its how we can make it better. Ask us how we feel after this season and I'm sure we'll say we're very happy with it. Even to the "powerhouse teams", and even when they are in a slump after a long competitive streak, we don't hang our heads and cry about the season. We try to find out how next year can be better. We all can agree that regardless of how the competition season goes, we learn much too much to say that we didn't love it.

[bduddy]

Just because FRC is not all about the competition on the field does not mean that FIRST is exempt from getting that part right. Not only did FIRST fail to do that in about the most public way possible last night, there have been issues all year with a FIRST-provided, unchangeable system that has far too many points of failure and often appears to break down for no discernible reason. Also, the competition itself not being fair eventually affects every part of the program.

[popnbrown]

Originally Posted by Clayton Yocom

Please don't look at the complaining as a part of the competition. Its how we can make it better. Ask us how we feel after this season and I'm sure we'll say we're very happy with it. Even to the "powerhouse teams", and even when they are in a slump after a long competitive streak, we don't hang our heads and cry about the season. We try to find out how next year can be better. We all can agree that regardless of how the competition season goes, we learn much too much to say that we didn't love it.

Fair enough! Just a feeling, and you're right to an extent I guess.

And I agree to a full extent that what happened is not good AT ALL. But I just don't want students and participants in general to be disheartened and upset that FIRST or whomever is making it un fair that they forget the actual reason why we are here, and that reason is not to compete and win trophies. That's all. FIRST achieves to put a team in every high school like a football team, but each FIRST team's end goals are very different from a football team.

Not saying trophies don't matter, just that it's not all about them.