Friend Teams-- The Sweet Challenge

[Beth Sweet]

This is my fifth year in FIRST, I suppose that's beginning to make me an "old-timer". I was talking to Jane (always a good thing) and the topic came up that, as of late, there has been a change in the attitude of FIRST. I've noticed it in myself as well. I feel like when I joined FIRST, it was much smaller. When it was smaller, it was more intimate.

I find that now, it is becoming quite a "race to the top". Every team is trying to become the next 67, 111, or 1114. When a team is not selected for a tourament, they turn off caring about what's going on on the field and find something new to do. I admit I am one of the worst at this (as those of you who saw in Atlanta when we didn't get selected may have seen). When I first joined, and at the 1 competition I went to before I joined (my sister was on HOT), teams who didn't make it picked another team and cheered!

So the next point is, how to fix this? I think one of the starting points is to return to the intimacy. Obviously, we will never be able to be like before. There are many more teams involved now and that is a good thing. I think that one of the keys to returning to the intimacy, friendship, and general ideals of the program is to return to all teams becoming friends again.

So what I'd like to do in this thread is to ask each reader to call out which teams their team is friends with. Who are your friend teams? How do you support them? How does your team reach out and get new friend teams?

I challenge everyone who reads this thread to reach out to the teams in their surrounding area. Get together and do an outing with other teams. Get to know them, their students, their mentors. Awhile ago, Barry posted his Bonzack challenge, so I'll call this the Sweet Challenge. Go out, and make friends with as many teams as you can and post about what you've done!

PS. Mods, I know this may sound like chit-chat, but I'm really very serious about this. Can we please leave it in General, at least for a little while?