Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[waialua359]

Threads like these make you feel either terrible for building our program ground up on our own (no school support or regular education budget), OR very proud that while being in pretty much the most rural part of our State (and middle of the ocean) to be able to compete in FIRST Robotics.
I can understand why there would be frustration/misunderstandings/anger for other "better" teams. But I guess for us, we decided a long time ago that if we were going to continue, we better figure out how to keep getting better.
I think we arguably spend the most amount of money on Robotics.
I always complain about FIRST rules and issues that prevent us from competing like the other teams.......but its never been to dumb down the playing level so that we could compete.
For 16 years now, we keep trying to get better despite the dynamic challenges that we all face as FRC teams.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but when I look back at old robots, even some of the better teams...........I cant help but think they all look outdated. Raising the bar is what it's all about, and the best part of going to competitions is seeing all of the cool robot designs we never thought of.