Why FIRST is the best robotics competition

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Today I attended my first non-FIRST robotics even and I was rather struck by the differences. This event was a National Robotics League event, which was combat robotics at 15lbs. Based on the experience I have serious doubts about whether or not our team will ever participate in NRL/Battlebots in the future. Registration seemed to be very very chaotic, since it took us a while to even figure out if we did check in or not, which turned out to be related to inspection.

One particularly disturbing thing that happened was a safety issue. Early on in the day the team was soldering and I happened to trip and land on the hot iron (with safety glasses on of course, although here there were no competition staff in the pits at all except to check match times, no one seemed to be checking for safety). The burn was fairly bad, so I searched, and searched, and searched for first aid. It took me a good half hour to finally find the first aid station, after finding a police man and walking five minutes to the station office. It occurred to me that this would never happen at FIRST, I've seen injuries and between safety staff and team safety officers I feel that the problem would be more easily addressed in a timely manner.

In the end, between safety and inspection issues, our team didn't get to compete, but we had an interesting and fun time none the less. The mood of the competition seemed so much less educationally and professionally based though, that I don't think we will return while I am still on the team. We still participate in Table Fighting and are current Boston champions at the competition, and we will return to this, not because of safety or professionalism, but because it captures for us atleast more of a fun loving attraction to robotics than the alternative competitions. Overall FIRST is and always will be the best competition for robotics, because it excels in not just safety and professionalism, but also because it teaches students to love robotics in a fun and safe way .

P.S. I knew I was in the wrong place when we said we did FIRST and only one person of twenty knew what it was.