Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?

[Tom Ore]

[My posts are usually quite short, but out of character for me, here is a rather long post]

In the past, around this point in the season, I would think “Wow, we had a great group of kids on the team this year!” Now, in my 5th year on the team, I finally figured out what our other mentors already knew: we get an amazing group of students on the team every year.

As soon as I realized this, I began looking ahead – looking forward to working with our returning students and getting to know new students. What can we do to help these students, what off-season projects can we do, maybe we can collaborate with another team on some project, maybe can we run a summer camp, how do we encourage more students, how can we better inform students at our various outreach events, how do we reach more students and introduce them to STEM. The outreach events we do have taken on a bit more meaning to me.

We have many mentors who have stayed with the team long after their own kids have graduated. (My youngest went off to college last year – and I plan on staying involved until they kick me out.) These mentors don’t stay to build robots – they stay because they are passionate about the mission of FIRST.

Our team has been applying for Chairman’s since 2008. We’ve been doing outreach events and adding a bit more every year but I didn’t think we had the resources needed to rise to the level of the teams that are RCA winners. It was quite an emotional moment this past Saturday at 10,000 Lakes when they announced us as the winner of our very first Regional Chairman’s Award!