Gracious Professionalism

[Rob Jenkins]

I think that the problem that most teams are having is the drastic change from last year to this year as far as strategy and game play go. Last year there was little to no interaction because it wasn't how the game was played. The 2000 and '99 years that I was involved in, however, were heavily based on contact because it was a physicaly challenging 2 vs. 2 game design. Emphasis was given in the beginning on robust designs, and people had to know that contact was going to happen.

I am a firm believer that there is nothing as far as playing hard on the field that goes against gracious professionalism. Frankly, no one likes losing a match, and the physical robots do come out on top a lot, so envy often leads to complaining about these designs. This isn't the point though. If a teams builds and efficient, aggressive robot and goes out to play hard that's fine. The important part is that the team carries themselves professionally on and off the field. Ruthlessly attacking broken robots or robots that are not a threat is not the purpose, and then there is a problem. Also, being a respectable team off the fiels, whether a team wins or loses is key. If teams are being respectful and just playing as hard as they can, I think that everyone should just have fun, be proud of the outcome of the matches and we should all remember the real reasons to be doing programs like FIRST.