Did You Catch 'Em Being Good?!

[jblay]

Justin Foss of 2168 coming over to our pit while the issues with 2168's robot where still being worked out to give some advice on how to reduce the compression on our shooter, without his advice we probably wouldn't have been able to shoot at the middle hoop in hybrid like we did at championship. He did this without even thinking about the fact that our next competition was also his next competition, he just wanted to help.

[Cynette]

Pick just one or two? That's impossible!

Inside my team...
Nathan - a first year student - volunteering to take extra scouting shifts!

Mollie - another first year student - for her optimism when given a big task. She replied with such simple words, "we got this, it's ok." And they did have it and it was ok.

The approximately dozen students who took a Team 148 button to bring back to one of our kids who is a big (huge) 148 fan and couldn't come to St. Louis.

I bet I could tell a story for each of the kids on the team. Hmmm maybe that's a good idea to share with my team.

From adults - Judy V. for giving me a tiara to wear on Friday. So unexpected!

The team leader from a Hawaiian FTC team, for the cute flower for my hair!

The adults from the Columbus Corps Team 4188! Each time I met one they said thank you to me for the help I had given through e-mails in prepping their team for St. Louis. It was so sweet! And that simple act of saying thank you made me feel so good over and over again!

And the folks from Sheperd Expo Services for being so magnanimous when we hosted the All Rookie Meet and Greet in their space! I'm sure they were happy to have us leave!

[Andy Baker]

Here's a good one:

Lead Robot Inspectors Chris Paulik, Jeff Pahl and Chuck Dickerson (with Chris and Jeff being LRI's on Curie and Archimedes) approached my team (3940) regarding some robot rule non-compliance on Friday. This was after we passed inspection Thursday morning, while I was busy inspecting other robots.

They came up to me after pow-wowing around our robot before a match began. I was on the other side of the field, and wondered why a bunch of yellow hats were around our purple robot. Then, they huddled by themselves for about 2-3 minutes and came over to me.

Chris tried to keep a straight face and told me that our robot was illegal. I asked why this was the case. He said that since our air cylinders were covered with yellow tape and our plastic air tanks were painted purple, we were violating the rule that did not allow this sort of modification, although he knew it was cosmetic. All four of us joked about this for a little bit, agreeing that this is a rule that inconsequential. Then, I said "seriously, are you gonna make us change these tanks and take off the yellow tape?" They said yes, since another inspector on another division made a team do this previously on Thursday, they need to be consistent. Although I did not agree with their interpretation of this rule (or we would not have painted the tanks in the first place), I agreed that they were correct in their enforcement, and proceeded to go back to my team and pose the situation to them.

So, as we were waiting our turn back at a practice field, we took a knife to the yellow gaffers tape on the cylinders and some fingernails to the tape on the plastic tanks. Within about 5 minutes we had all of this rouge stuff off of our pneumatics. Our pit captain, Sarah, when to the Curie question box and asked for the LRI. Chris came over and Sarah talked to him about what we did to fix the problem.

While this was funny, it was also awkward for those inspectors to address me with this issue, since I was also an inspector. They were graceful and correct in their ruling, and understood why I disagreed with their interpretation of the rule. However, they still made us comply. Chris, Jeff, and Chuck were in a bind with this issue, and handled it well.

Andy B.

[Andrew Schreiber]

This one happened at Orlando week 2 but starts about 9 weeks prior.

79 Decided to program in C++ this year due to an influx of mentors that knew it and a really rookie programming team. We trained them on C++ and they coded the robot alongside the mentors. (That's the boring part of the story.) However, when the time for Orlando came around it turned out that every single software mentor was volunteering for some role or another leaving our students in the position of being without any support from us at their first regional as a programming student. Without any coaching from us they set up programming help for other teams there. Not just in C++ but in Java and LabView as well... Apparently a few of them knew each language and, on the fly, figured out the WPILib enough to help program other teams robots.

Imagine my surprise when a couple of them came running up to me exclaiming how much fun they were having helping other teams program their robots.

I'm very proud of these kids... I just wish they'd saved some energy for programming 79's bot (they all wore themselves out and fell asleep in the stands by the end of the day).

[JaneYoung]

Please post as often as you would like.
Add as many memories, thank yous, and highlights as you choose.
In short, write a book.



Jane

[twetherbee]

A number of people from Team 525, The SWARTDOGS, (along with our alliance partners, The Pink Team) helped us fix our ball collector mechansim after they inadvertantly broke it in a collision at the very end of Curie QF3-2.

Thanks again, guys.

[lakstick]

My personal favorite part of the year was when the mentor of team 3396, Imperium Machinamentum, came to team 216's pit at Waterloo and thanked us profusely for the help that we had given them, last year! It really caught my attention and made me think about how much of an impact you can have on others!

[Mark Holschuh]

Big Al Skierkiewicz and his crew of inspectors on Newton for their sage wisdom and their help to improve our robot each day.

Jim Hackbarth, who was quick to jump to help other teams whenever he heard an announcement in the pits.

[Carolyn_Grace]

James and Kelcey on Archimedes were two of the field reset crew and they were awesome. With a few other people we got a good system down that allowed us to quickly set up then have time to goof around and dance on the barrier between matches: definitely a highlight of my trip. They both cheered on teams, said good luck to drivers as they got set up, and genuinely cared about doing a good job. AWESOME volunteers.

Tim (one of the mentors from my team, 33!) came by the field with a coffee for me when I desperately needed the extra energy boost. So appreciated.

The drivers from 67: LOVE these kids. Always make me laugh. So dedicated. After they lost in the finals on Archimedes, they both shook hands with their opponents and congratulated them. Very classy high school students.

[Leeebowitz]

Something small but something wonderful to hear: At championship, a girl on 2200 drops her bag of hand-out buttons and they scatter across the floor in the middle of one of the exits from the stadium, which as you all probably know, are never uncrowded. Everyone stops to help her pick them back up.

At Wisconsin, the majority of our team hadn't arrived with our back bumper so that we could pass inspection Friday morning and were stuck in the terrible traffic. The inspectors came over and gave us the materials and worked alongside those of us who were there to make a new, legal bumper. It was only because of them that we passed inspection before our first match.

[QueenBot]

FTA Paul George on Newton for allowing me to be on the elim. field with my team because they don't remember to drink water or listen to other people [volunteers, FTA] when Swoopes [our robot] is in their presence.

So many acts of kindness, hugs and general niceness was witnessed at Championships!!

[LemmingBot]

Mrs.Frick and Mr.West, who left Championships to pick up medicine for two of our team members caught an awful chest cold.

[JaneYoung]

I just remembered one that involves one of my fellow mentors on 418, Danny Diaz.

Because I was volunteering in several programs and I wasn't always sure where to report to, I got a little flustered early on in the competitions. Danny came up behind me on his way to the FLL field and gave me a great big, "Hello, Jane!". He quickly noticed that I was flustered, bordering on frustrated, and he helped me get back on track, helping me understand a part of the FLL aspect that I was supposed to be doing.

This is a small thing but the area that we covered physically, made it a big thing. FLL was spread over a significant amount of the venue and time was a'wasting, and I was nowhere where I needed to be.

Danny and I have been mentoring together over a span of 10 years or so and we've learned to work together as a great team, supporting each other and the contributions that each of us makes to the teams that we work with. We've had to work on building this relationship and the results are moments like I experienced on the Championship level: respect, understanding, support, and help. It was a great little moment in the STL experience. Thank you, Danny!

Jane

[Carol]

Wildstang made a concerted effort to apologize to every MOE member they could find for an unfortunate remark made by one of their parents in the stands (which most of MOE did not hear anyway).

[rsisk]

These teams helped another team overcome an illegal servo issue:

399 - Window Motor
3929 - Window motor hub
3476 - Two nylon spacers used in mounting the window motor

No questions asked when coming into their pit. I just said, "Do you have this to help a team" and they gratefully handed over the parts.

This is why I love being a part of FIRST