Most Memorable First Moment

[Tim Baird]

My most memorable moment from FIRST has to be, hands down, the last day of Nationals in 2000.

I was the driver for Gael Force, and I had just gotten accepted to WPI. Back then, to get the WPI scholarship, your team had to be voted on by all of the other teams. We had spent a lot of time on the past two days playing politics and talking to a lot of teams about my situation and asking if they'd please vote for us. I flat out could not afford to go to WPI. Even with loans it would have been insane.

Saturday morning rolls around and we're all sitting in the stands on Einstein. Woodie begins to announce the scholarship winners (there were only a few back then, so they actually took the time to say them all), and he finally gets to Worcester after a few minutes seeing how it's at the end of the alphabet. When he said "The WPI Design Innovation Scholarship goes to Team 126 Gael Force", I literally fell into my seat because I couldn't stand up anymore. The team members than poured on top of me as hugs, high fives, and back slaps were going all around.

I then borrowed a mentor's cell phone and called my parents to let them know I had won. They didn't believe me at first and thought that I was kidding, but as I tried to explain, the Voices of Liberty had started signing the Brazilian national anthem, so I hung up out of respect. I called them back in a few hours after a couple of matches to bring them up to speed.

Later that day, we battled our way to the top and found ourselves in the finals againgst 25 and their alliance. We won the first round, but then lost the latter two. While we may have lost, I was still the happiest person in the world having a National Finalist medal on my neck and knowing that my college tuition was taken care of now.

To this day, it's still probably the best day of my life.