Award winning year streaks

[MysterE]

Originally Posted by Wendy Holladay

Joe you are pretty amazing to either remember or find that post. yes that was me, I felt I'm sure the way Daniel does now.

I will say this, we work very hard every year to "beat ourselves" and continue to innovate. When we write our awards (they are on our website, thank you 1114 for posting yours and helping us) they are really on the focus of this year, other than our repeat events. We look good, but when I look at the CMP contenders, I know how far we have to go.

My observation is that most team do thru phases, based on the interests and talents of their students and mentors. The truely great teams manage to always do great, no matter what.

When (not if) 3337 wins RCA at the Bayou, no one will be happier than my "family". We have known their lead technical mentor and his family and many of their members for many years. We mentored them in 2010 when they won Rookie Inspiration. They are family to us.

Wendy Holladay

I found the earlier post that you made heartening. Gracious Professionalism is such an odd thing - in one way you want your team to win because of their hard work. In another way, you are excited when a team you are close to wins because of their hard work.

I am proud, in many ways, that the one of the monolith teams of the Bayou comes from Louisiana. I'll be the first to say that we took more than one look at Combustion's previous entries as we were penning our own. I did the same thing when I was writing our Dean's List entry for this year. One of the things that amaze me in Combustion's writing is the ability to add so much action into it. I feel like I'm reading a movie trailer at times :-)

If and when our team proves able to win, it will only be by using the shoulders of great teams like Combustion and Fusion, and Simbotics, and so many others that we stare at with awe.

To tie it back to the overall topic at hand - teams that consistently win awards prove something to the whole FIRST community - you never get there. You never reach the point where you can stop inspiring and stop growing your team. A team streak is merely the result of a group of people who has learned to never stop being FIRST. We'll get there one day. Hopefully we will all be able to have that experience.