Ken's Writing Challenge

[Ken Leung]

Jane, and all others interested in this challenge, I would like to present to you our first entry:

Qualifying Match #8

James Taylor (2199)

Topic #2: The Present
Think back on everything happened since you began the 2007 FIRST season when school started last fall. Contemplate every experience you have gone through, and tell us what you learned about yourself, your team, your mentors, your FIRST community, your culture, your world, your education, your life, or your future, from this one year you spent in FIRST.

Enjoy.

Qualifying Match #8

James Taylor (2199)

It's 9PM and I'm standing in an elevator in the Hampton Inn at Annapolis. A fit guy in black and green stands in the corner opposite me, shirt lined with homemade buttons. They form an almost sash around the team number across his chest.

"Robotics?"

"Robotics."

We both nod, already knowing enough about each other than riding an elevator with someone should tell you. We get off and head into the lobby, sit down on opposite sides of the TV to signify our teams. Karrah slides closer to the TV to give me a seat next to her on the faux-rock ledge. Now, with everyone gathered, maybe 40 or 50 of us, there's a flood of light blue and camouflage taking over the hotel. Mr. Eastman walks to the center of the circle.

"Tomorrow morning, the final qualifying matches are going on. By some luck we're allied for the first match and got into the same hotel. So we have until then to get a plan together, because we both need to win this. Let's throw some ideas out there."

And somehow, with an ungodly amount of teenagers in an unknown city, there is order. We spend the next hour talking with each other about how we could possibly work together to make this match go down the way we want it to. Everyone throws something into the discussion, it gets thought about and either becomes a real consideration or just a possible idea. We're running back up to our rooms every couple of minutes to get the scouting sheets we all prepared, to get our lists of tools and parts, to get the bowl of ramen off the coffee maker before we burn the place down.

And in the morning we all wake up, all of us having the same elevator ride from last night only with different people as we slowly make our way into the lobby for continental breakfasts. We eat with new friends and new teammates, share bad coffee and undercooked bacon while talking about mechanics I can only try to understand. I know how to write a press release and talk to sponsors; the difference between screw sizes is beyond me. Eventually 2199 congregates together and we all go over last night's plans, have Rubin tell all of us in public relations that scouting and interviewing is going to be more important than ever today and despite the incredible monotony of the process it was a necessity. There is a grudging agreement as we all remember sitting in bleachers filling out scouting sheets for what was most of our Friday. It's for the team, after all.

On the bus ride to the Naval Academy, Clancy and I argue about the success of the ramen while the engineers try to draw up arm modification plans on the back of a shaking seat. There's a general unspoken hope that our bus driver doesn't get lost and hit a gas pump again. He manages not to.

At the Academy, PR makes its way to the stands, engineers go to the pits. Karrah escapes discussion of preferred cereals and who has the best idea for variations of monopoly. After dealing with incredible amounts of mechanical knowledge, sometimes mindless discussion or just being alone for a few minutes is totally necessary. And the emcee starts speaking and we see Nick and Nick wheeling out the robot while Ben and Rubin talk strategy with the guys from the hotel. Pretty soon the robots are on the field and everyone in PR has a scouting sheet on our laps.

There is a surprising electricity in our section. For as much as we all love the team and talked it up, no one really thought a whole lot about one match mattering. It's our rookie year, you don't get near the finals rookie year, it's just natural. But we have a chance of actually winning now and it's incredible. No one really mentions it, but with Alex looking up from his programming to watch the match, we know it's important.

And the clock starts and none of us score autonomous. No big loss.

And 2 minutes and we start moving. We're scoring tubes while the other teams run perfect interference; we're scoring better than we possibly thought. And then we're winning. We're actually winning. Up until 10 last night, we had seen this as a lost cause.

And the match ends and our alliance won. High fives all around, me yelling obscenities to Seipp and Clancy as is the general match winning behavior. Pretty soon, Aaron's running out from the pits with the score.

We're eighth. Rookie year, last qualifying match, we're eighth. We have a real shot to seed. There is this insane joy running through everyone on the team as we here this, people like me who had gotten into robotics for college now actually pumped up to be doing well, it was amazing. It was the validation for all our work, for the money we'd spent, for all the fund raising and early wake ups and long discussions we'd had in Dietrich's room. We'd done well.

And we ended up placing eleventh after the rest of the qualifying matches, which was still great since the top seeded alliances picked lower seeded ones which pushed us into seed eight. And nah, we didn't win the regional. We got close but we fell off a ramp. But that doesn't matter.

In that one moment, that one planned perfection of our qualifying match eight, in that incredible combination of teamwork, engineering, scouting and luck, we were justified. All of our work meant something, all of us were thrilled, and we were a team. And I can't think of any more definitive moment of FIRST than that.