How did you findout about/became involved with in FIRST?

[mlantry]

I found out about FIRST during a memorial day parade in 2009 when i saw a robot driving down shooting these odd looking balls. When i saw the robot, I was just amazed by it, to be honest i thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen. From there i became involved with my middle school's FLL team then a year later with my high school's FRC team. I was just wondering how others became involved with FIRST?

[EricH]

Back when I first "got involved", there was no FTC. There was no FVC. There was no AndyMark (though there were an Andy Baker and a Mark Koors, both on team 45). There was no FLL. There were no alliances. The competition that year? Ladder Logic.

My dad had gotten involved with my K-12 school's robotics team (formerly known as team 61, Southern California Circuit Breakers--now 207, 294, and 330), known as team 82, the BeachBots. (The number change to 330 happened the following year due to FRC numbering at the time.) I hung out in the shop if I had nothing else to do--I was all of 9 years old at the time. From 1998 to 2000, I hung out in the shop. In 2001 and 2002, I couldn't do that due to site rules. But in 2003, I was able to join the team.

I've been to the inaugural SVR, Los Angeles, Arizona, and San Diego regionals (and, in the case of SVR, L.A., and Arizona, the second year as well--matter of fact, I didn't miss an L.A. Regional until 2010, and I went to at least one competition every year from 1999 to 2010, then ran into doing other stuff and haven't been in two years). I went to Nationals in 2000. And I thought these robots were kind of cool. Trust me, I officially joined as soon as I could. Some would say I never left.

I still have a badge somewhere labeling me an official Robo-Orphan.

[treffk]

I had a cousin on team 1108 and when I heard about the program while in middle school I was insanely jealous. My freshman year we found out that my high school was starting a team. I (thankfully) was allowed to join the "senior only" team. That year we had 2 freshman, 1 sophomore, 2 juniors, and 7 seniors. That was all she wrote, I've been extremely involved since.

I actually was introducing myself today at a FLL meeting I was at and realized I just finished my 7th year in FRC, 5th in FLL and 2nd in JFLL. There was a comment made that the uber-volunteer gets burnt out and can leave at any time, I didn't realized we were allowed to leave. I thought we were stuck for life.

[LemmingBot]

I first saw a FIRST bot in my freshman year (2009) For some reason I thought it was with the Franklin Institute (a museum in Philly) so I thought it was just some sort of publicity thing.

The next year one of my friends told me that he was on a robotics team called Moe, he was always involved with it and he even brought me to a few meetings. My friend then forced me to sign up. I was doubtful I would be able to do anything (Im an art student) and I had not had good experiences with organized sports in the past. Moe quickly proved me wrong and I quickly became addicted to FIRST.

[androb4]

I found out about FIRST when my elementary/EARLY robotics coach took us on a field trip to spectate the Lone Star Regional in 2004 or 2005.

I got involved in FLL and FRC (along with other robotics competitions) in the 2005-2006 season. I went to Hogg Middle School, which was the only middle school to participate in FRC - team 1484.

I completed three years there and moved on to Reagan High School, continuing FIRST in the 2008-2009. And here we are today 2012. Graduating, and becoming a mentor..

[Cheerleader1073]

Funny story... I was great in math and science for my age freshman year of high school (of course we all know now that's not what matters on a FIRST team) so when I saw flyers for a FIRST Robotics team I was immediately interested... BUT... my room wasn't clean to my father's liking the day I asked him to go to a meeting so I stayed home and since I wasn't at the opening info meeting I figured it was too late to join without asking. It wasn't until the middle of the school year that I had our lead mentor as my study hall teacher and somehow I found out that she was associated with the team so I asked her about it and got involved. Brings back memories... at that point in time I was just a little freshman cheerleader that people were hesitant to take seriously after I'd come into meetings in uniform since they were right after cheerleading practice. I was also one of only three girls at the time on our team of about 30-40 people. To think that the team went from that to a team of 100 including mentors, and half of that being girls, and holding two titled leadership positions including co-CEO before graduating is incredible. It didn't make me an engineer, even though that's what I started out as my first year of college, it made me a better person - I mean both professionally with business and management skills, and ethically. I guess that was more of not only how I became involved, but how I was able to see myself and the entire team transform for the better after only a period of a single high school career... but figured it'd be worth sharing if anyone has read this far .

[dictionaria13]

I heard about our team last year, which was the team's rookie year, but I didn't think I'd be interested. A bunch of my friends were on the team, so I heard a lot about it from them. Turns out it's VERY interesting!

[Suitster]

I learned about FIRST at our county fair in 2010, when 1511 set up a full field and was (supposedly) running their robot around (trying to get it to work). I talked with one of their mentors for several hours. I was going to set up a team at our school, but I felt the cost was prohibitive. A year later, 1551 helped set up our team.

[rsisk]

My wife Dona started judging at LA Regional about 2004. Never really understood what she did during the weekend in March, all I knew was the kids and I had the house to ourselves.

Then in 2008 she convinced the school where she was teaching to start an FRC team and asked if I would be the programming mentor. Sure, whatever. Sounded like fun.

Oh boy.... that was the start of something huge!

That year I helped rookie team 2493 Robokong build a robot (wait, what? There are things called omni wheels? How cool is that! Our long based robot steering problems were solved!). The team competed in San Diego, and Dona and I judged in LA.

The next year we added judging in Phoenix to the agenda and I also added field setup/teardown.

Then we added judging at CMP in 2010. In 2011 I became a FIRST Senior Mentor for SoCal, along with adding judging and inspecting at the Alamo regional.

2012, we have now started 12 FRC teams, about the same FLL teams, competed at San Diego, judged in LA, AZ, CVR, SVR, MAR CMP, and CMP. Inspected at LA, AZ, CVR, SVR, and CMP. Control system advisor in LA. Judged 4 FLL Qualifying tournaments and 3 FLL championship tournaments.

Future plans? Start an FRC regional in the Inland Empire and develop Robokong University - training for mentors.... in addition to everything else we do.

On another note, it is interesting to read this thread and learn of all the great ways to get more students involved in FIRST. Great thread!

[GaryVoshol]

I blame it on my daughter's elementary teacher. She told us, "B.. really ought to be on this MindStorms team." (That's what we called FLL, named after the product.) So the next year they started with Volcanic Panic.

The next year, FLL came up with this thing called a Project, and my wife became the project coach.

After 4 years, we thought maybe we ought to help out at the state tournament. We did queuing for technical presentations, and we kept those slow tech judges on schedule! Members of my daughter's now graduated FLL team judged this new thing they had, Jr FLL.

That same year my daughter joined the FRC team. We found that going to competitions was really pretty boring, especially on practice day. Lots of waiting around to see your team on the field for 2 minutes. So the following year we started volunteering. After stints in queuing and pit admin, I became a referee and was asked to be a head referee when we went to the district system and suddenly had more than twice the number of events to cover. Also about that time I started reffing in FLL, and have been one of the state head refs for several years now.

So even though my daughter will graduate from college this year - with the help of thousands and thousands of dollars of scholarships, much of them earned because of her FIRST experiences - I'm staying with it. I want to help give other young people the experiences and opportunities my daughter had. And it's a load of fun!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Back in 1995, my son had joined the TV club at school to follow in Dad's footsteps. I helped out and then in early 96, a robot team had started at my son's school. The team approached the club and told them they needed to do video documentation of the build. So he started shooting and then found out that he might have a shot at going to Disney for the Champs. I assisted with editing and some chaperone duties but never worked on the robot. The next year he abandoned video (thank you!) and started working on the mechanical team. So I took on more chaperone duties covering animation and editing and some shooting. Then the rookie Midwest Regional took place about twenty minutes away. My wife and I attended and somewhere in the middle of the weekend an electrical problem started on the robot. I was called into the pit and have been there ever since. When non-team volunteers were still inspecting, the Midwest Regional didn't have enough inspectors and they kept coming to me asking questions. I mentored the team on robot rules and meeting inspections at the time. Eventually, I was pulled in and then First allowed team volunteers to inspect. That first year I was lead at Midwest and assisted at other events. I was not inspecting officially (didn't arrive until Thursday afternoon) at 2003 Champs but was assigned to help teams that had problems or failed inspection. In 2004 I was asked to be a division lead inspector at champs and somewhere around 2007, First decided they needed someone to point a finger at for Champs and the other three LRIs pointed at me. A few years ago, Russ Beavis decided to step back from leading LRI training and inspection operations to concentrate on his DEKA work. First asked me to take over and gave me the title Chief Robot Inspector. Thanks to Russ for helping me along the way, I couldn't do this job if he hadn't prepared me. Thanks to Frank Merrick who keeps everything going for us at First and thanks to all the people who inspect all year long. They make this one of the most fun things you can do at competitions. I still mentor WildStang electrical students and visit schools who have yet to learn about First programs. I inspect for FTC and Vex tournaments and judge FLL when I can. In my younger (and crazier) days, I mentored as many as 7 FLL teams, WildStang and was an assistant Boy Scout leader all at the same time. I now know you need sometime for sleep and other things like CD where I visit daily.

[TedG]

In the late 90’s, I had heard about the robotics team at our town’s high school, but didn’t know much about what they did, but it sounded cool..and interesting.

When my son was a high school freshman in 2009, he wanted to join the team, and because the mentors/advisors encouraged any parental help they could get… I hung around to help. It was so cool when we finally got into build season, and then finally seeing a competition. That is when I learned what FIRST was all about.

The following year (2010-2011 season) the advisors (who had been running the team for a very long time) wanted to get out of running the team, were looking (pressuring) for some of us “helping parents” to take over running the team. So after much consideration, I and another parent took over running the team for the next 3 years while our sons were in high school. What a great experience for the students, our sons and the mentors as well! It was a lot of work, but very rewarding to see the students have fun and grow as people.

2013 was my last year as an advisor for the team and being a full-time mentor, as it took up way too much of my time for three years. I still dropped by during build-season a bunch of times this year, to lend a hand to the students and to help work on the robot. It’s a hard thing to give up completely.

My son was on the drive team for three years, and was the team co-captain for his Junior and Senior years (and on his own merit, not because of me). He is now in college majoring in Electrical Engineering, and tries to make it to the competitions when he can to offer moral support to the drive team and help out in the pits.

We plan on being there this Saturday in Lewiston ME, to support BERT at the Pine Tree District.

[ratdude747]

Simply put, a coin toss.

When I was a freshman at Harrison High School, during activity period, I was kinda split between the robotics team's (1747) call out and a board game club's competing call out. It's a good thing the quarter landed heads up... or else I wouldn't be posting this (and I probably wouldn't be an EET Junior right now either).

It was odd as I was the only freshman that year. But the team took me in anyway. While it wasn't my only extra-curricular in my high school years, it was my favorite and honestly the only one that I could say was in any way a success (and a huge success too!). Band? I was a lousy tuba player at best. Last chair. Emphasis was on winning awards (contrary to the "student centered" claims made by the department). Hated it by the time I quit at the end of my Sophomore year. Tried a few other things, didn't like them. FRC? Tons of fun. The awards, including a 2010 dean's list nomination/semi-finalist that I am very grateful for (thanks HBR!), were icing on the cake.

But the best part for me? Portability. As fate would have it, my dad finally escaped a really lousy job and moved on to a much better federal job... but that also meant moving after my junior year. Luckily, yet another team, 2783, took me in. While there may be separate teams in FIRST, we truly are at the core a single connected community.

While a coin toss got me in the door, it's the awesomeness of FIRST that made me stay and keeps me involved to this day.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Larry,
Where are you taking EET? I thought schools were phasing that out. I was one of the first graduates in the program at Bradley.

[R Stephenson]

well it was 1998, I was 7. My dad was asked by a co-worker to help out with a high school engineering program for a 'few hours a week for a few weeks' and of course i tagged along ... things have changed quite a bit since then.