2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[buckskinner1776]

Does anyone have a link to the bad lip reading video. That was funny and the kids are looking for it. Thanks!

[redlau]

It was a very fun game overall to watch and be a part of, however I felt that this game should have had an endgame. The end game really shows which teams can push the envelope from good to great

Just my two cents

[neely_2052]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

FIRST needs to put their long standing teams at a higher priority than mass expansion, and they need to hold some real feedback sessions with teams or an advisory panel of teams, because it seems they have a mission of what they're trying to do, and it doesn't always align with what the teams want and need. And I don't mean this about the two champs thing, but I speak on other factors. They need more integration into education.

Also, the timing of the Chairman's Award and other top awards needs to be communicated clearly, before any music festival or dance party, and certainly before everyone leaves.

I completely agree with the Chairman's Award thing. Our team was not going to stay for the concert, but we felt like it was really important for us to watch the Chairman's winners. Unfortunately, we didn't get to because they were very slow at starting. We probably sat there for close to an hour before deciding to leave. Everyone was exhausted and sitting in the stands for another couple hours didn't help.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by MsKutz

The Higest Rookie Seed Award for Carver-Curie went to Team 5442 which was ranked 16th on Carver with an average qual score of 142.90. The higest rookie seed on Curie Team 5407 was ranked 17th with an average qual score of 143.00 which was higher than the winner's. When they combined the awards for two different fields, they did not think it through. The award should have gone to the rookie team with the higher average.

I don't think so because averages are dependent on the field and the teams on that field.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by MsKutz

The Higest Rookie Seed Award for Carver-Curie went to Team 5442 which was ranked 16th on Carver with an average qual score of 142.90. The higest rookie seed on Curie Team 5407 was ranked 17th with an average qual score of 143.00 which was higher than the winner's. When they combined the awards for two different fields, they did not think it through. The award should have gone to the rookie team with the higher average.

It's the highest rookie seed award, not the highest rookie score. In previous years it was the exact same way with W/L (actually was worse in previous years since W/L could be more easily luck based).

[brrian27]

This year my only official interaction with FRC was volunteering as field reset at the Utah Regional, and chaperoning my old team at the Championship.

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Volunteering for the first time was nice, but could have been more organized with instruction of what to do and where to go. (But, I was late on day 1 due to a ~1 hour drive, so can't complain too much.)

---
I had a great time being with my team and old friends at Champs, but was pretty disappointed in many things. For context, I have only gone to Champs one other time (2013).

First, the opening ceremonies on Thursday morning. In 2013 that was a nice way to start off the event and feel like it's "real." My team skipped this year's opening ceremonies because it was just another thing after a long day.

For the webcast, just do one overall camera view. While watching it in the pits on the big screen, we could hardly see any detail at all.

Also, I disliked how the division finals/champions awards were handed out. My team's alliance made it to finals of Archimedes, and handing out the medals/trophies just seemed rushed. It was just kind of walking down and high-fiving the refs (after a controversial call that knocked us out too..) and didn't have a special feeling the kids deserve.

Oh, one other small thing is that the fourth alliance drive teams in the division finals should be brought out to the field to shake hands. We were a fourth member, and it was just kind of disappointing to not see the students get any recognition as being part of the alliance.

And oh, then there's the Einstein event/closing ceremonies. I was very surprised and disappointed at this.

First off, start things on time please. I watched our division playoffs, then went to the pits and we had enough time to pack everything, etc and when we all came back, we still had to wait a very long time for Einstein to start. First needs to better plan the timing of events.

Of course on Einstein, there were all the A/V problems. The terrible echo, split-view on the webcast, bad camera angles, spending way too long on camera on individuals in the crowd. Those all can and should be fixed easily.

Then, besides the matches, I was just not entertained much. My idea of a good show does not involve sub-par music, and jokes that aren't that funny. Step up the performance and make it more professional. Have entertainment that appeals to an audience of anyone.

We didn't stay for closing ceremonies, but moving everyone to the opposite side of the dome just isn't a good idea. Additionally, I heard that Dean talked for almost two hours, which is just not okay. His message is important, but again things need to be on schedule and entertaining. Also, Chairman's should be given more recognition than they were (as we, and many others, had already left and not even seen the award).

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Anyway, sorry if I sound cynical. I had a great time at the two events I attended, and hope that FRC can continue to get better.

[Chris is me]

This was the worst game I have ever played, and perhaps the worst game in FRC history. I don't think it's impossible to make a decent game with no defense. I don't think a decent stacking game is impossible. But this wasn't it.

Of the many fundamentally broken aspects of this game's design, the one that bothered me the very most is the strong disincentive for specialization. Doing "one thing well" was all but a competitive death sentence, and I think it will take years to recover from it. One of the greatest subtleties of almost every FRC game is that if you were smart and stayed within your resources / limitations, you could create a winning robot by mastering just a few critical aspects of the game instead of being a jack of all trades. Teams that over-reach who felt everything was necessary to be competitive often struggled, and those who learned the important lessons of setting priorities and knowing one's own limitations found incredible success. This year turned that on its head. If you couldn't manipulate both totes and cans, if you couldn't get a can with a five stack underneath it, you just weren't going to win events (without something odd like a can burgular, specific metagame needs, etc). Now a generation of students and teams have been taught that the only way to make it is to try and do everything. We'll see an increase in teams over-reaching for years, and FRC is worse off for it.

Obviously, the presence of a chokehold strategy in the form of the center can race was quite problematic. I'm sure others will touch on this point extensively.

The tournament structure, specifically average scores with no forgiveness for any mistakes, was atrocious. It's robotics - things go wrong. Consistency should be important, but if the first second of the first match can make your entire elimination run completely worthless, something needs to change. I never want to see the morale of a team so quickly killed again. I never want to have to make students play a match that they know is utterly pointless again. This must not be the new norm.

I'll have to post other things I have (including positives) later, I'm already procrastinating too much. But I just want to say - I have never, ever, ever seen an FRC game cause more of FIRST's most dedicated and respected mentors to reconsider their future involvement than this one. We can't survive more than one year like this.

[Goldenspeedster]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

This is not true at all. Driver control is only so useful. Lots of teams take advantage of sensors to automate stacking and scoring routines, feedback control is very useful in giving a smooth driving experience, and providing an easy to use interface for the drivers to use is essential for top teams.

Even still, semi-autonomous actions only get so complex. 90% of the time spent making a PID loop is really just tuning three variables, since it's not even a dozen lines of code (using WPIlib, that is). I would agree that programming needs more emphasis, seeing as autonomous is the one time programmers get to take risks. I also think some of the point values were a bit low. Only 8 points for a container set?

Autonomous in 2013 and 2014, in my opinion, were nearly satisfactory, but a bit more complexity might be nice.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

The tournament structure, specifically average scores with no forgiveness for any mistakes, was atrocious. It's robotics - things go wrong. Consistency should be important, but if the first second of the first match can make your entire elimination run completely worthless, something needs to change. I never want to see the morale of a team so quickly killed again. I never want to have to make students play a match that they know is utterly pointless again. This must not be the new norm.

Although this may be true for quarterfinals, you should take a look at the 1st alliance in semifinals on Archimedes: Semis 2, 4, and 6

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Of the many fundamentally broken aspects of this game's design, the one that bothered me the very most is the strong disincentive for specialization. Doing "one thing well" was all but a competitive death sentence, and I think it will take years to recover from it.

This can't be repeated often enough. As a mentor for a team with limited means, this has been the design philosophy I have stressed every single year, and it has served us very well. It simply was not possible this year, and the result was that our design process was very much stressed and our end result suffered.

This game had two game pieces, neither of which were easy to manipulate, and both of which had to be manipulated in order to score. It was simply *too hard* to build a "minimum competitive concept" bot, and I saw *lots* of teams suffering from this.

[Glacier]

Originally Posted by RoboticJoev

Well to start they need to make autonomous less important, this year and last year if you missed in auto the game was over and that is not fun for that alliance or anyone watching. Going into the finals of Einstein, it was obvious that Newton was going to use every tote. As soon as they got three cans in tbe first match it was all over. In the second match, there was an even split but Hopper did not get their auto so everyone knew it was over then as well.

I also feel like far too many things were left to the refs discretion this year. Refs need to make calls in regard to penalties but they should not get to decide what scores and what does not. At the end of the season I was left wondering so many things about what counts and what does not. Can I be touching the auton stack if I am not supporting it? Does the same apply to last second cans on stacks? What does fully supported even mean? Now the point is not that there are no objective answers to these questions but that refs can and have given me different answers.

Also transport configuration was a cool idea that was implemented so poorly that it sucked what little fun this game had to offer out before the match even began. Frank said at the drivers meeting at Champs that teams have 1 minute to setup as soon as they are allowed on the field. This is however 'just a guideline' and a ridiculous one at that. To be clear, our team used every second of that minute to just unfold our robot normally. Now add that 5 robots are moving around you along with a plethora of volunteer carrying stacks of totes around and you would be lucky if robots were ready after three minutes.

The tournament structure was awful, it just does not feel rewarding making it to the finals and losing. In all honesty it felt like a challenge more than a competition and I was pretty sure that the 'c' in frc is not for coopertition.

FIRST should realize they can keep it simple, there is no need to add unnecessary game pieces that no one wants and are worth far too many points (litter).

Finally, for the love of bot just let there be some defense. This game was so boring to watch, or should I say wait becuase all I did was wait for one side to mess up and then stop caring becuase the match was over if auton had not already decided that.

I'm not going to say your many points of emphasis are based on a feeling of bias or not a feeling of bias. But I will add that the FIRST game-makers need to factor in a ratio system for point values (not saying they haven't). The potential for a large point value in autonomous should be considered important and it needs to be. I mean they are robots, robots should be programmed, hence their given name. But I feel it quite unnecessary to put important game changers (Recycling Cans) in the hands of autonomous. I will also agree with saying if a game is decided in the first 15 or so seconds then why compete? I mean a stack of six without a can is a measly 12 points to a stack of 6 with a can, regardless of litter. If one alliance has already grabbed an uneven amount of cans in their favor before tele-op begins the maximum point value for the opposing team would be 258 points. That 258 being a maxed out score for that alliance. Really good alliances would only score 204 if they really were good at trowing litter. So if you create a game designed like a see-saw you will find very uneven possibilities. With a point range of 204 you would be doomed during playoffs on the Einstein fields.

Although its purely speculation that a team could consistently snag all four cans off the step during autonomous, it raises the question if they had been able to do that they wouldn't be matched.

But this is all post season talk and the what-ifs about the spontaneous possibilities that could have happened during the Recycle Rush season.

[Jardanium]

I will flat-out say it, the game was boring. It was missing the defense and the high-flying action that games of years past had. Stacks of boxes aren't nearly as impressive as robots hanging from pyramids or a bridge balanced with three bots on it. Recycle Rush just dropped the ball when it came to creating an exciting spectator sport.

This year just had a different atmosphere during the competitions. Our bot was a mid-low ranger this year, and due to the average score rankings, many times we felt like a hindrance to our alliance partners rather than a help. At least in previous years when our robot had an issue with performing a task, we could make it up with another. (i.e last year when our robot's catapult system broke, we played defense) This year however, it was either, you stack, or you're in the way, and that definitely needs to change for next year.

The early season was riddled with problems. The Northern Lights Regional during Week 1 ran so far behind because of problems with the field, that members of my team fell asleep in the stands on several occasions. I understand this is a problem with Week 1 in general, but it became quite ridiculous having practice matches end an hour and a half later than they should have.

Livestreams were a real let-down this year. It was real exciting last year to have won an award at a regional, and then have people from back home watching the stream wishing congratulations. This was missing this year, as the quality at many of the events, especially the Championship, was poor. I've heard a lot about the PNW having fantastic A/V, and if that is the case, that sort of quality should be the standard for events. (and I stress this again, especially the Championship.)

Now I move onto the biggest let-down of all, the Championship.

FIRST certainly didn't prove to me that they could handle 600 teams, let alone the 607 that ended up attending. The event was unorganized, chaotic, and half the time my team and I had no idea what was going on.

It started with the identification badges, which my team had no idea about. It wasn't well publicized that these were required, and could be picked up on Wednesday, so most didn't bother. The reason for these (as we found out later) was security reasons, as a week ago there was an apparent bomb threat at the Old Courthouse building. If anything, they're a great souvenir!

Next came a problem several other teams in the Hopper/Newton area faced, as several things were stolen after the pits closed on Thursday. We specifically lost a drive computer, (thankfully Team 1816 graciously helped us out!) but other teams reported missing laptops and other personal items that were left in the pits, areas you'd think would be safe and secure.

Then came the divisional award ceremonies, which for reasons I still don't understand, were lumped together. In every right of the word, the eight groups of teams were divisions, as they had their own fields, finals, and representation on Einstein. So why place the two nearby subdivisions together strictly for awards? I understand the reasoning when it comes to an award like Engineering Inspiration, as that qualifies you for next year's championship, but for other awards like Team Spirit and Excellence in Engineering, there is no reason why they couldn't have been sub-divisional awards. I don't feel this combining of subdivisions was communicated very well either, as many people seemed to be surprised by this.

The merchandise lines were way too long. (sometimes an hour or longer) The clothing area of the store was a real let-down as all you could get were $50 jackets, or iron-on custom t-shirts.

The paper airplanes need to stop. It got way too out of hand this year, as people draped toilet paper from the top level, ripped up programs into tiny pieces and dumped them over, and threw other objects like water bottles and glowsticks. It looked nothing more than a massive spring break concert, and created a huge mess. Having sponsors encouraging this activity isn't good either.

I don't know about anyone else, but this year Einstein kind of lost it's charm for me. Not having the massive LED background, and trading it for two fields sort of made it seem like the qualification rounds with everyone watching. Last year they had a lot more going on between matches, (Awards, Speeches, Performances) and that seemed to be missing this year by separating everything. I personally wished the Einstein field was located on the side with the stage, as then you could have had performances, speeches and awards in-between the action.

The finale was a let down. Last year, we had a carnival, free food, dance lounge, and a game lounge. This year, a DJ that stayed on stage way too long, and two acts performed that very few people even knew about.

This ends the long list of complaints that grew over this season. I feel of all things the Championship really needs to improve. If FIRST cannot prove that they can hold 600+ teams and maintain "championship experience", then how will they be able to maintain two championship events with a total of 800+ teams in years to come?

[Glacier]

Originally Posted by Jardanium

I will flat-out say it, the game was boring. It was missing the defense and the high-flying action that games of years past had. Stacks of boxes aren't nearly as impressive as robots hanging from pyramids or a bridge balanced with three bots on it. Recycle Rush just dropped the ball when it came to creating an exciting spectator sport.

This year just had a different atmosphere during the competitions. Our bot was a mid-low ranger this year, and due to the average score rankings, many times we felt like a hindrance to our alliance partners rather than a help. At least in previous years when our robot had an issue with performing a task, we could make it up with another. (i.e last year when our robot's catapult system broke, we played defense) This year however, it was either, you stack, or you're in the way, and that definitely needs to change for next year.

The early season was riddled with problems. The Northern Lights Regional during Week 1 ran so far behind because of problems with the field, that members of my team fell asleep in the stands on several occasions. I understand this is a problem with Week 1 in general, but it became quite ridiculous having practice matches end an hour and a half later than they should have.

Livestreams were a real let-down this year. It was real exciting last year to have won an award at a regional, and then have people from back home watching the stream wishing congratulations. This was missing this year, as the quality at many of the events, especially the Championship, was poor. I've heard a lot about the PNW having fantastic A/V, and if that is the case, that sort of quality should be the standard for events. (and I stress this again, especially the Championship.)

Now I move onto the biggest let-down of all, the Championship.

FIRST certainly didn't prove to me that they could handle 600 teams, let alone the 607 that ended up attending. The event was unorganized, chaotic, and half the time my team and I had no idea what was going on.

It started with the identification badges, which my team had no idea about. It wasn't well publicized that these were required, and could be picked up on Wednesday, so most didn't bother. The reason for these (as we found out later) was security reasons, as a week ago there was an apparent bomb threat at the Old Courthouse building. If anything, they're a great souvenir!

Next came a problem several other teams in the Hopper/Newton area faced, as several things were stolen after the pits closed on Thursday. We specifically lost a drive computer, (thankfully Team 1816 graciously helped us out!) but other teams reported missing laptops and other personal items that were left in the pits, areas you'd think would be safe and secure.

Then came the divisional award ceremonies, which for reasons I still don't understand, were lumped together. In every right of the word, the eight groups of teams were divisions, as they had their own fields, finals, and representation on Einstein. So why place the two nearby subdivisions together strictly for awards? I understand the reasoning when it comes to an award like Engineering Inspiration, as that qualifies you for next year's championship, but for other awards like Team Spirit and Excellence in Engineering, there is no reason why they couldn't have been sub-divisional awards. I don't feel this combining of subdivisions was communicated very well either, as many people seemed to be surprised by this.

The merchandise lines were way too long. (sometimes an hour or longer) The clothing area of the store was a real let-down as all you could get were $50 jackets, or iron-on custom t-shirts.

The paper airplanes need to stop. It got way too out of hand this year, as people draped toilet paper from the top level, ripped up programs into tiny pieces and dumped them over, and threw other objects like water bottles and glowsticks. It looked nothing more than a massive spring break concert, and created a huge mess. Having sponsors encouraging this activity isn't good either.

I don't know about anyone else, but this year Einstein kind of lost it's charm for me. Not having the massive LED background, and trading it for two fields sort of made it seem like the qualification rounds with everyone watching. Last year they had a lot more going on between matches, (Awards, Speeches, Performances) and that seemed to be missing this year by separating everything. I personally wished the Einstein field was located on the side with the stage, as then you could have had performances, speeches and awards in-between the action.

The finale was a let down. Last year, we had a carnival, free food, dance lounge, and a game lounge. This year, a DJ that stayed on stage way too long, and two acts performed that very few people even knew about.

This ends the long list of complaints that grew over this season. I feel of all things the Championship really needs to improve. If FIRST cannot prove that they can hold 600+ teams and maintain "championship experience", then how will they be able to maintain two championship events with a total of 800+ teams in years to come?

I think you pretty much summed up the entire year, I enjoyed reading what you had to say.

I will say though the lag between matches was morose and boring at times. This problem could have been rectified with activities for the crowd or just basic announcer and crowd interaction especially at championship. As well as the speed of robot set-up and field reset (of which I was a part of). The field crew and FTA's definitely played a major role in how fast the matches were played.

[Rachel Lim]

- The game. If it's even accurate to call it that, since Recycle Rush was way more of a challenge than a game. Specifically:

- It wasn't a good spectator game. My sister only liked watching noodles being thrown after seeing parts of Alamo, SVR, and champs. (In general, watching stuff being thrown is more fun than watching stuff being pushed around.)
- The lack of defense, and alliance interaction.
- The chokehold strategy, and matches decided in the first <0.2sec.
- The all-or-nothing points, especially in autonomous.
- The multiple game pieces, both of which were necessary--using one and doing well was almost impossible.
- The unscored litter points. Everything about it--the fact that only HPs could score it and that it has basically no point and yet could disable the best robots--was frustrating.
- The inability for third robots to contribute much. I'm not against cheesecaking from any side of it, but it would be nice to have a game where it's not required to win.
- Difficulty for teams to score. Litter points were often the majority of points scored in earlier events. The importance of containers, the easiness to knock over stacks, and the all/nothing scores made many low scores.
- The focus on working alone. There were a few alliances where teams would work together to stack/cap, but the most successful ones just did cycles by themselves.

- Average points for elims advancement. I'm divided about how I feel about if for quals, but for elims it's just brutal. One match can completely ruin a team's chance of moving on, and there is no way to make it up.

- Mecanum. We've done it once, and I hope we never do it again. It's confirmed what I thought, and much more. I never would have expected us to get sucked into the "mecanum trap*," but we did, and it wasn't fun. I'm looking forward to the return of defense so we won't do this again. That said, it was nice to see it well implemented by many teams.
* My name for the idea that omni-directional movement is important enough that spending time on a drivetrain that we've never tried before, and will spend a significant amount of time on, will help us in the end. (Okay, it's just team-specific, but it was something I learned this year...)

- Champs webcast and the whole split screen thing. We tried to watch a few of our matches from the pits, and it was very, very difficult to tell what was going on.

- Paper airplanes. This really needs to stop. Period.

- The split champs announcement, how it was done, the response to it, and the town hall meeting (from what I've read/watched, I wasn't there in person). Basically the whole attitude about it, their unwillingness to listen, and the complete lack of any survey beforehand.


In all, 2015 was an interesting year, and one that I learned a lot in, but one I'm very happy is ending. Good bye 2015. Good bye Recycle Rush. Good bye and good riddance.

[ThePaulitician]

This is all for FRC:

-I want to see FIRST do more robot durability challenges. For example, I would always love to see a hockey challenge (one on real ice or some sort of friction-lacking surface if possible) because if it is similar to the real life sport like in the NHL and at the IIHF championships, it would be very much into cooperating with teammates and strategy. Also, I know it is sort of risky and difficult, but if defense is allowed, I would like teams to focus more on durability and maybe even having "skating" robots as opposed to standard drive systems. And if defense is allowed to a certain extent, teams will need to build robots that can take checks, hits, and deflect pucks like ice hockey players. Although it would be a very big change, it would be a challenge that is harder to "exploit" if you know what I mean.

-Overall, I want to see challenges that make teams use their teammates and not "take advantage of the game" all by themselves. I understand that teams are allowed to do and build as they please but I mean in 2013 when SPAM (FRC 180) sat at the feeder station in South Florida and just kept sniping disc after disc, it seemed like it was not even fun or competitive anymore. I mean for me that would not be fun unless I was the human player (which I am now), and the drive team can't have fun with one control in use. I feel like a hockey challenge would be so cool though. Like especially if they implement powerplays and penalty kills where teams would lose bots temporarily due to penalty infractions. If in any way a hockey or similar challenge is done, it would be amazing. I would love to see challenges that require utilizing teammates.

-One thing I noticed about this year (especially at championships) was that there were too many game pieces and it delayed the game flow and game play. Although so many volunteers present, the re-configuration of gamepieces took a few minutes and it was even worse when there were scoring disputes because the field was closed until referees resolved it, holding up the field staff longer.

-The bandwidth for the field needs to be increased or re-allocated in some way. We originally had a camera on our robot at our first regional, but the bandwidth of the field only allowed us to process 7 fps, which was not even useful. So we scrapped the camera idea as a whole. The FTA and field staff already do good enough of a job, but if they could use more bandwidth, please do.

-I feel that because every year FRC has the clear, frame perimeter of the field as a way to make the field bound, FIRST should make money with this as they do in professional sports. Dean says FIRST is a sport of the future, so why not place ads there for companies. Although it may seem like an executive decision that I am in no way qualified to make or suggest, the money they make can be used to reduce costs to teams and save everyone money.

-About the two championships idea... It is a great idea but it is in the wrong places. It is great to see that FIRST is trying to accommodate to people from all over the world, but Houston and Detroit are the worst places to do it. It seems to be a North/South facilitator, which is reasonable as there are many teams from Canada, the Northeast, and Michigan of course. But in the South, everyone is so far apart. In South Florida, the closest team to us is 20 miles away. I would suggest doing an East/West duo of cities. Detroit is such a run down city that unfortunately does not have the means to rejuvenate. In St. Louis every hotel was booked within 20 miles in every direction from the EJD. If this shifts to Detroit, you can't book hotels in the east as you would be in the Great Lakes. I also feel that inclement weather could prevent flights and mess up competition scheduling. Not to mention, with the mass amounts of people coming into town, how are there going to be enough hotels to facilitate to everyone? I'm not saying this out of paranoia of being in dangerous areas, but in Detroit, the entire west side is slowly becoming a ghost town. Are teams going to have to stay in the abandoned houses or are they going to have to stay 1 hour west in Livonia, Ann Arbor, etc?

-Also, these recent competitions have not been the best to demonstrate with. Recycle Rush and Aerial Assist were awful for us in demonstrating. Our team could make the fields out of wood, but we never demo in areas with enough space. On top of that, this year, we were invited to meet some senators and legislators in Tallahassee (our state capitol) and I cannot tell you how embarrassed I felt when we showed them a game with monotonously colored totes and trash cans. I was ready to apologize to them personally. And as if that was not bad enough, spectators from all around were watching us on the elevated hill that the capitol sits on. Yes it was good that it is attracting eyes and it is hilarious for us students, but to adults and especially people who actually have the political power to enhance this program, the past two years robots were awful for showing off to people not familiar with the program.

-Most importantly, I know that Dean Kamen cannot attend every competition, but please make efforts for him to. My team saw him in Atlanta at Peachtree and the entire philosophy of FRCs were completely changed with one 30 minute speech. in my opinion, Dean is such a realist; he realizes our struggles with money and the reality of only having a 4-5% chance of actually winning a regional. Some teams out there, especially those in Florida, take this WAY too seriously and are too harsh on themselves and the other teams. I love the competition atmosphere but every robot does not need to be considered "overpowered" or "useless." Dean's speech at Peachtree taught me that at competitions, you should really evaluate your team in terms of competition as looking at what people are missing out on both at the regional and people who do not compete in FIRST. Your robot is so "you." It is unique to the team, whether it be in skill, design, or cosmetics.

Thank you to everyone who made this season another amazing success! You all really changed my life this year. It feels so invigorating to have gone to championships for a sport I was finally good at.

[Hjelstrom]

Originally Posted by stens987

Well I feel like we are pretty good about only standing when they are announcing our team and a quick cheer when the match is over, but if we have ever stood in your way while you were scouting a qual, you have my sincerest apologies.

Its true! Jenny yelled at me a couple times when I stood up during the competition! Sorry about that! :-D