UFH: Christopher Hibner

[Andy Baker]

Congrats, Chris! You definitely deserve this. It is great to see team 308 constantly push the limit with regard to robot design for FIRST games. Your efforts challenge the rest of us to keep up. If FIRST did not have engineers who push to be innovative and develop new designs, then FIRST would only be a glorified science fair.

I totally agree with Chris' opinions with regard to FIRST being a competition. I love his competitiveness. The fact that I know he and team 308 are working hard to make a great robot pushes me and team 45 to work harder. We want to win... Chris definitely raises the bar and makes it harder to win, but that is life. Competing is reality.

As a side note, here is a story about Chris:

I've been helping to organize and run the IRI (Indiana Robotics Invitiational) for the past 4 years. Team 308 has attended each year we held the event. They always make the effort to come down from Michigan to compete. After our first year's IRI was complete, the most encouraging thing I heard from any attendee was Chris saying this: "This is just as good as a FIRST Regional. I totally support you for sticking to the FIRST rules, calling the matches fairly and not backing down under pressure. We will be back next year." As my role as an IRI organizer, I see Chris as my "customer". When my customer gives me support like that, then I will work hard to make him happy to give him what he wants. So, for each of the 4 years of IRI, Chris has come up to me after the competition was over and said the same thing. His support gives me great encouragement. This kind of support makes all the hard work worth while.

Thanks, Chris.

Andy B.