What Is Something Awesome That Happened To You And/Or Your Team This Season?

[BEEKMAN]

Winning GSR after being told by one of the top 8 teams (we were in second to last at the time)(and i'm not going to say the team #) that they shouldn't take advice from us, as we're were "clearly not a qualified team to be giving advice". Many teams let the leaderboard go to their head. It felt very good to beat them in the finals, and become a regional winner!

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by BEEKMAN

Winning GSR after being told by one of the top 8 teams (we were in second to last at the time)(and i'm not going to say the team #) that they shouldn't take advice from us, as we're were "clearly not a qualified team to be giving advice". Many teams let the leaderboard go to their head. It felt very good to beat them in the finals, and become a regional winner!

That always feels good doesn't it? You guys played a spectacular defense, I loved watching your team in the final matches.

My story is hearing another FIRST alum (from team 78?) mention my teams 2001 robot, from my freshman year as her favorite robot ever. It was one of my favorite robots too, he could scoop up 20 soccer balls in 3 or 4 seconds.

[ideasrule]

The most personally memorable event was a screw-up that happened at FLR. During the elimination matches I was beside the arena helping reset the robot after each match. During the finals, our team was part of the blue alliance, but I had lost my team jersey and was wearing a red t-shirt. One judge asked if I was on a team, and when I said yes, told me to go join my team members.

[lenny8]

During boilermaker this year, after we had just lost semis i was feeling really down. one of the seniors came up to me and said " Lenny, thanks for making this the most fun year Ive ever had." ( this coming from kid had been on the team since 7th grade.) that's when i realized why people like Andy baker, Joe Reel and Chris Elston do this its not about winning or losing, it's about the memories and experience you give the kids that will last them a life time.

this was my first year mentoring and i cant wait for the years to come.

[Ed__]

When my team got be on team 1676 alliance for one match and all the scouting and plain for match was completed by 1676 the only team in the whole regional that had all the scouting and plain for match before I did. I like to thank them for this I found this to be awesome just in to see a good team be good

[Kibaspirit]

Probably winning the Traverse City District for the second year in a row. That was awesome.

[Chris Hibner]

For me, it was the last "breakfast club" of the build season.

Merging two teams can be a tough thing to do. Merging two teams with a lot of history and a lot of pride has potential for disaster. When we first realized that merging was all but certain, there was a fair amount of animosity about the situation and a lot of unanswered questions: what is the team name/number going to be? who's history are we keeping? how are we going to integrate the process and culture of each team? blah blah blah. I always hoped for the best, but I could see that there were going to be landmines to dodge.

Of course there were some growing pains, but for the most part the integration has gone well. I was really starting to notice that the team was coming together. Then at the last "breakfast club" of the year (which was an AMAZING pot luck, btw), Mr. Martus gave a great speech about how the team has come together and how we need to celebrate the unity and the birth of the new team, and how the merger has made us a much better team than just the sum of the parts. Afterward I overheard many comments saying how the merger may be the best thing that could ever have happened.

Mergers always have the potential for disaster. It makes me really proud of our entire group of students, teachers, metors, parents, and team alumni to put aside some of the past rivalry to make this new team work. I'm ecstatic to be a part of it. As always, nothing is perfect - but at this stage of the game it is working better than we could have hoped.

[Burmeister #279]

Breakaway has been the most exciting game I've ever played or watched. Every match everyone was cheering, clapping and high-fiving. There were two things in particular that i thought were the most exciting, the first being when 1329 suspended from 1448 and the entire crowd was cheering. It was awesome to see and i was sad 1448 and 501 never got the chance to do it in the finals.

The second most exciting was "field testing" our robot in five separate, crazy matches where everything that could go wrong, did, but we still were able to come back and win 3 of them. in the first two our winch cable snapped and prevented us from hanging. in the second of those, our drivers were able to back off the tower and continue scoring an additional two balls despite the loss of the hanger. after fixing it, in the third and fourth matches, we hung from only one of two claws and amazingly came out with no damage. The final of the five exciting matches was when one of our bumpers came halfway off and when we went to hang was too low for it to count so our entire section was yelling and screaming "HIGHER" as our Game Objective operator raised and lowered the winch until the bumper popped up on to the platform causing the loudest cheer from our side of the stadium. It was amazing and the drive team got high-fives from both alliances. I don't have a picture of it but i am hoping someone else got one and would be willing to share it =)

For me, helping out 1448, 1806 and several other teams with programming issues was quite awesome as well because once i made the effort to go and help the other teams, others on my team started making the effort as well. I've notice that we haven't done much in the way of helping other teams throughout the past 4 years of competition and i'm hoping that by making the effort in st. louis the rest of my team will follow and help out some more.

Despite not winning anything at our only competition this year, St. Louis Regional, I can say it was the most fun we've had at any competition since my class were freshmen in 2007. I believe we've grown a lot as a team from going to St. Louis and most of this stems from the fact that everyone agreed that every single team that won an award deserved it. Being the oldest team there, it definitely wouldn't have been the first time anyone on our team thought otherwise. we had our whole group cheering on the teams throughout the event and were especially loud when our quarter finals alliance partner 3186 earned the Rookie Allstar Award. Myself and the rest of the seniors on our team plan on contributing more of our time to other FIRST teams throughout our time at college and hopefully further, and this is also very, very AWESOME.

[Richard Wallace]

Thanks for starting this thread, Jane.

I thinking about contributing my own moment, when I saw this:

Originally Posted by Burmeister #279

...
For me, helping out 1448, 1806 and several other teams with programming issues was quite awesome as well because once i made the effort to go and help the other teams, others on my team started making the effort as well. I've notice that we haven't done much in the way of helping other teams throughout the past 4 years of competition and i'm hoping that by making the effort in st. louis the rest of my team will follow and help out some more.

Despite not winning anything at our only competition this year, St. Louis Regional, I can say it was the most fun we've had at any competition since my class were freshmen in 2007. I believe we've grown a lot as a team from going to St. Louis and most of this stems from the fact that everyone agreed that every single team that won an award deserved it. Being the oldest team there, it definitely wouldn't have been the first time anyone on our team thought otherwise. we had our whole group cheering on the teams throughout the event and were especially loud when our quarter finals alliance partner 3186 earned the Rookie Allstar Award. Myself and the rest of the seniors on our team plan on contributing more of our time to other FIRST teams throughout our time at college and hopefully further, and this is also very, very AWESOME.

I get chills reading this kind of post.

Before I left St. Louis about a year ago, I told my team and my fellow volunteers that, while I would miss working with them, I was confident that they would succeed brilliantly. Team 931's success this year is self-evident. The St. Louis Regional volunteer corps' success is clear to those who were at the event. The success of FIRST shines, like a beacon across the miles, in the words Burmeister #279 posted above.

[scawsome]

I think that the best two moments that I was in was at WPI. First was when our autonomous scored three balls in one match, a lot of people spent time working on perfecting it (our first ball always hit our alliance's bump so when the third ball went in we went crazy! (considering that we still had the rest of the match to go!)
The second best moment was when we picked Team 228 GUS for our final pick. During several of the qualifying matches the GUS robot broke down a couple of times due to a mechanical failure. But, really they had a great robot that just was having problems. Before the alliance selections our scouters knew that they had fixed their problems and that no one else would pick them (they didn't even show up to a couple of matches). We took a chance (not really) and picked GUS to round off our alliance w/ Team 20 and dominated the eliminations! Their robot performed up to and surpassed any expectations we had. Go scouters and go Team GUS (and Team 20 of course)! See you in Atlanta!

Just to show that the team 27th in seeding points can still win!
Go FIRST!

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by BEEKMAN

Winning GSR after being told by one of the top 8 teams (we were in second to last at the time)(and i'm not going to say the team #) that they shouldn't take advice from us, as we're were "clearly not a qualified team to be giving advice". Many teams let the leaderboard go to their head. It felt very good to beat them in the finals, and become a regional winner!

Brendan, that win was epic!

I will agree with Brendan, winning GSR was amazing, but because our team was on the winning alliance was not the reason why. Back in 2003 my older brother founded team 1058 and I was hooked on FIRST after watching them compete at GSR that year. I got involved with FLL that fall and was a 1058 fan ever since 2003. I went to every GSR since, traveled to the Greater Toronto Regional in 2005 with them, along with several off-season tournaments. In the fall of 2007 after graduating from FLL I decided to join team 1519 as they were a homeschooled team and I was close friends with several members. Since then, I have gained so many new and awesome friends on team 1058 at tournaments (BEEKMAN included ). So just being on the same alliance with them was amazing, but winning the regional with them was just so much more than that. My brother never/rarely smiles and is not one for emotion, but I have never seen him smile as big as he did or dare i say hug me like he did after the finals. So for me, awesome was after winning the regional and congratulating your teammates to go over to team 1058 and realize you won, and you won together. I only wish my grandmother was still here to see it. She hoped it would happen in previous years which it never did, but 6 months later it did.

[huberje]

Definitely something awesome that happened was when we won our 3 vs 1 match (Especially since it was our first match in the competition).

This has been a really exciting year, and I'm looking forward to what other awesome things will happen at our next competition.