If you could Breakaway all over again...

[Garret]

In short, any team that couldn't even push a ball into the goal failed. FIRST gave them an out of the box solution to most of the problems they faced.

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

My team was one of those teams that did not score every match and had a hard time doing so due to the shape of the front of our robot. Did my team fail just because we couldn't score? I would think not. If you saw our robot you would see that it had its flaws but still had a unique drivetrain and very effective drivetrain for traversing the bumps. I think that a team that does not learn anything or does not at least make an effort to inspire others is the team that should not compete not the team who did not make a competitive robot. I feel sorry for any team that measures success purely on the basis of winning because that team will never succeed and will never be able to really enjoy their FIRST experience.

My team has some things we want to do better next year, but we are always striving to improve and never give less than our best. My team had problems with money this year and we had to build the robot on an extremely small budget. As such we decided to buy cheaper materials rather than sacrifice functionality. Looking back if we had bought higher quality parts our robot would have done better. We could have gone with a basic kit-bot chassis that we built and hooked up in the first few days, but would we have learned as much? No we would have made a robot that was boring (no offense to anyone who used kit bot).

I understand your frustration, but seriously FIRST is more about Gracious Professionalism and Inspiring than building the best robot.