What are your victories?

[OrangeCataclysm]

This thread is a wonderful example of what FIRST really is. You can win every district or regional like 33 or 2056, but you definitely can't always define that as victory.

For me personally, on my four years on 862, my victories were many. It started out small in 2010 and 2011. I wrote a whole section of camera code myself in 2010 (that didn't get used), and that was something victorious for me. I helped run our team's scouting that year as well. Though we only made it to elims once that season, it a victory nonetheless.

The next biggest victory for me was in 2012. I programmed at least half of the robot and our rather odd autonomous. In that year, our robot's shooter was perpendicular to our drive train, which meant to score a basket, we needed to curve to the side of the fender in autonomous. My victory that year wasn't the double finalist appearance, or even the triple balance at MSC--it was getting that dumb thing to work ~70% of the time. It was seeing what I had worked on function as I intended, and that fueled my inspiration for my final year.

Now 2013 was the biggest victory for my team, of course we made it Einstein and won a few districts, but there were many, many other things that I would deem more important. For starters that was the closest year our team had ever come to winning chairman's. At the West Michigan district, a judge came up to me and the other chairman's presenters and told us that choosing the chairman's winner was one of the hardest decisions she had to make. We ended up with not one Engineering Inspiration award that season not once, but twice.

As a part of the chairman's team, that was one of my crowning achievements, along with seeing our good friends at 3641 win chairmans. We had given them some tips the year before, and we were glad to see it pay off for them.

At West Michigan, we also helped 904 to get their first district win in their team's history. That was another personal victory for me, helping other teams succeed that in the past haven't done as well.

There are many other things my team has done that I'm proud of, but those are the most direct with me. I don't want victory in matches to define victory for myself, and I'm sure most people from even the teams that consistently win can agree with me on that.