The Growing Gap in FIRST & on CD, and Our Responsibility to Fix It

[FRC4ME]

For the record, I didn't understand the values of FIRST until my first regional either. Then, after witnessing one competition, I was absolutely blown away by the level of cooperation and the sense of community. I immediately "got" gracious professionalism without ever being taught the formal definition of that term (in fact, I still couldn't recite the formal definition). The biggest "wow" for me was when I watched a team in the finals use their own timeout to go fix the robot of the opponent they were about to battle for the win. Just watching that was enough; no one needed to explain to me why it was occurring.

What I'm getting at is that it's the community (i.e. us), not the mentors of one specific team, who is responsible for spreading the real meaning of FIRST.