Why did you join FIRST?

[Chris is me]

I was about to write a massive post until I realized it became my entire first history. So here's the shorter version.

In 2006, my "house parent" (live in mentor at a boarding school I went to) wanted me to try out robotics, so I joined the FVC team the school started. We ran into our share of problems, but what really got me going was the competition. The frenzy of scrambling to get our robot together, then helping out other teams witht he same problems while talking to a wide variety of kids was amazing. We ended up being 8th seed and losing right away.

It's what motivated me to start a team with my friend and my dad in 2007, FTC 63 "The Rebels". The idea is that we both left our boarding school for various reasons, so we were joining to compete with them (that and our love of the competition). We really had no idea what we were doing, so we showed up with a barely working robot. My teammate and I had a fight and she quit while I proceeded to take apart our robot to try and salvage the chassis.

At this point, a team I helped out from Wisconsin Lutheran High came by and helped me out. I was 5 seconds from quitting and they wouldn't let me. Finally we got the four wheeled... thing on the field and I ended up helping out in every match with strategy. I was the third pick of the 1st seed alliance and long story short I qualified for Atlanta entirely because of the brilliant amazing kids in Wisconsin Lutheran.

Right there I knew that I couldn't quit FIRST, it was WAY too much fun. Luckily, one of the event volunteers was on an FRC team with Vex parts so they agreed to let me use theirs to compete in Atlanta. Long story short, everything in Atlanta went wrong, but I had fun the whole way through, and then the FRC team invited me to join them for 2008-9 I just couldn't say no. Every single hour long drive to the shop is worth it.