Does anyone have any interesting tales of how they either got into FRC or of things that happened while you were in FRC?
OK, how I got into FRC.
My eldest son, Gustave (aka Gixxy and G3) became aware of FRC through some of the other kids in church who were on Tyborgs (FRC 2182) in 2007/2008. Upon arriving at Slidell High in 2009, there was no robotics team. As his sophomore year was ending, Gustave decided that it was intolerable that his school did not have an FRC team, and that he would make it happen. I purchased a domain name for a web site (as such, I consider myself the first sponsor of 3946), and Gustave spent the summer recruiting students, mentors (including Larry, a member of our church who had recently earned a PhD in Mechanical Engineering), and trying to get a teacher, but all of the teachers who might have coached robotics were already involved with sports teams or other activities. Gustave was well-considered among the school administration, so he had convinced someone to send him the list of incoming teachers (and their e-mail addresses) as soon as it was legally permissible to do so, so that he could get his pitch in early.
As it transpired, that list was unneccessary. Before the list was publicly released, Jesse Hobson (an SHS alum) learned that he was going to SHS, and had already heard of Gustave’s grass roots campaign. Jesse and his son Joey had a year of FRC experience with FRC 1912 (Team Combustion), and Jesse had already planned to start an FRC team wherever he went the next year. Long story short, 3946 began competing in 2012.
Because of committments I’d already made (mostly to my church), I was not formally a mentor for the 2012 season. Still, I started showing up earlier and earlier and contributing more and more as build season progressed. I wound up providing transportation for a number of students on Thursday for Bayou 2012, and had a grand time there on Thursday, but was unable to make it for competition.
Long before the 2013 season started, I knew I was going to mentor, and did. That first season, I wound up mentoring the climb of the pyramid. I remember that first season better than any but the most recent; we made some serious mistakes early, but corrected most of them by competition.
If you want stories of “things that happened while you were in FRC”, be warned, the inspectors and refs and CSAs and FTAs all have “war stories”. Sometimes, there’s just that one team that ______________. And no, I’m not talking about 900’s propensity to push the boundaries. I’m talking the OTHER way–teams that have a hard time finding the boundaries in the first place, and run into trouble with the inspectors/refs/control system as a result. While we love helping teams, the more interesting stories are remembered.
As an inspector, I’ve seen my fair share of “funny business”. Robot that was bagged in the parking lot? Yep. “But it passed at X unofficial event!”? Yep. I’ve had to stop a couple of second robots coming in because “oh, this is our spare parts allowance” “Didn’t you already bring in a bagged robot?” “Uh…”
How I got into FRC is actually pretty dull. My dad decided to mentor the team that my school had, back before I was eligible. I joined as soon as I could. He’s still there, I’ve switched teams a time or two.
The story of how I got into FRC is pretty intense. I have been waiting for a good opportunity to tell it and it looks like I found it.
My first few weeks of high school I noticed signs everywhere for the robotics club. At the time I did enjoy stuff like building computers, but my life was almost entirely dedicated to competitive gymnastics as I practiced 5 days a week for 3 hours a piece driving an hour both ways to get to my gym. I knew I had to get involved with some sort of club though, so I showed up to one of their meetings and was not very impressed with what I found. It seemed really nerdy and everyone was making references I did not understand. The only redeeming factor for me was the shop. The tools really did entice me. The team had no past robots built for context as that would have definitely impressed me as well. Anyway I decided to join the club but not really dedicate much time to it. I left for gymnastics at 3:30 every day so, id spend an hour at robotics not really doing anything and then drive out an hour to practice. I did not do this every day though. I usually just spent a day or two a week there. In November of 2013 this all changed when I had a traumatic brain injury. (Epidural Hematoma for anyone who wants to look it up). Ill try to make this less dramatic but essentially at gymnastics I was attempting a skill called a double back off high bar. A skill which I have had for years at that point. My complacency was increased by being over a foam pit where “no one gets hurt.” I ended up landing on my neck in the foam pit kneeing myself in the head. This ended up cracking my skull and causing some internal bleeding which led to a seizure. Doctors were not fully sure I would live but I am here so we all know how that worked out. Long story short while I was in the PICU I received a lot of get well cards from family and a few friends. One of the cards was from an unusual source. The robotics team. Their card was crumpled a little bit, think it had some grease on it and it had signatures from every member of the team. It told me once I got well enough to go to the kickoff event at Stony Brook University so I could see the new game. Because of the fairly long recovery I was actually not in school until the kickoff event. In fact I was only cleared to leave my house the day before. With gymnastics on the backburner while I recovered, robotics seemed like a pretty good idea to waste my time. The 2014 season hooked me and here I am today.
Wow. God works in mysterious ways. Stuff like this (including my own life stories, which do not invovle FRC) makes me wonder how atheists can understand the world.
Not how i got involved but definitely the funniest thing that has happened to me on FRC. I was in the stands at the Midwest Regional and this kid from another team (i’m not going to name the team to be polite) pretended to drop his pen right by me and then i looked at him trying to help him get the pen and he got on one knee, picked up the pen, and then asked me to write my snapchat on his arm. It was really awkward bc I have a boyfriend but i wasn’t going to reject him in front of alll his friends (the team has a lot of “bros”). So i gave him my snapchat and he then went back to his team (who sat next to my team) to boast. Hilarious yet awkward and embarrassing. Never a dull moment during competition season.
How I first got involved…
Fresh out of college, at my new job for a few months. I read in the weekly company e-newsletter about this high school robotics program they’re going to start sponsoring in my area. There was a plug for a meeting the next week for anyone interested in mentoring a team. I thought it sounded cool, and talked some of my friends into going with me. Before we went to the meeting, we looked up all of the schools the company was sponsoring. None were really that close to us, but we had a good idea of which ones we might be interested in.
So we get to the meeting, and two guys (Mark and Ken, the RPC chairman and regional director, respectively) spend a while going through a powerpoint. By the time we got to a short break, you would have thought they were trying to convince people not to join, what with their talk about how much the program costs and how much time it takes. So we’re sitting there digesting this and talking when up comes a teacher from the school we ended up joining. She had noticed one of us was wearing a shirt with out company name on the back. She gave us this pitch that basically went “I don’t have any mentors for the team, if I don’t get any this week then I’ll have to cancel the team”. And that’s how I got involved with an all-girls team at a catholic school, a little does of good old catholic guilt.
Next story, how I started volunteering at events (and then became an LRI).
It was my team’s 5th year. Things had been going pretty good for us - highest rookie seed followed by Finalist trophies 3 years in a row, and we finally had a good group of kids that were in their 3rd year on the team (we basically had a “reset” in our third year after graduating almost everyone). We get near the end of the build season and the kids approached us. They had this whole speech planned out. They were so grateful for everything we had done, they had all learned so much from us. But they felt they needed a chance to prove that they could do it on their own - prove it to us, themselves, and the rest of the FRC community. So, they were going to institute a new rule at competition called the “no mentor line”. Basically, that line of tape that outlines the pit was the no mentor line. We weren’t allowed to cross it unless the students asked us to.
So, our first competition I was bored. They never seemed to need our help, and there was nothing for me to do! So I went home after that competition and signed up to be an inspector at our next one. It gave me something to do, and I was still available if they needed me. We go through that competition and things are going well. Saturday morning before alliance selection, the LRI pulled me aside and asked if I was interested in becoming an LRI (I later found out he asked me because one of my fellow mentors told him I was the guy he wanted for the job). I had thought about it, but figured I would give it a few years before bringing it up so I could get some experience. He assured me that there would be at least a year of training before I would step up, so I said yes. My team ended up winning the event, so I went and inspected at champs for my first time that year too.
Fast forward to the fall… Our lovely VC was a little desperate for LRI’s at the events, and told me I was going to be “fast tracked”. I would get some “real world” experience at Duluth following another LRI, then run my own event in Minneapolis. Well, he got sick and couldn’t make Duluth, so I ended up getting none of that experience and ran 2 events as a rookie LRI. The rest, as they say, is history.
If you think that was bad… During Rebound Rumble a team at one of our events was giving away stress balls that looked just like the foam balls the robots used that year (except they had their team number on them and were a normal stress ball size). Anyways, the team was sitting in the stands when someone from another team’s mother leaned over and gave one of the stress balls with her son’s phone number on it to one of my kids. Talk about awkward!
Gotta love the way FRC kids hit on each other.
Okay…this was a vacation story, BUT it also intersects with FRC so bear with me.
I went to Indonesia this summer and went to a batik (Indonesian traditional clothing) store. I collect funky shorts so I was looking for a pair of batik shorts to add to my collection. A purple pair immediately caught my eye. I took a better look and saw it had robots in mugs that said, “can I borrow a cup of robots” so I bought them because it was one of a kind.
Later that night, I looked up “LASA Robotics” since it was also printed on the shorts to find out it was an FRC Team from Texas that I vaguely recognized seeing at Houston Champs. And looking more into their website, I realized that they sold the shirts with the same print, but not in shorts form. So somehow, a shirt made it to Indonesia from Texas, got turned into a pair of shorts, and I happened to find it and take it home to California. It’s a pretty crazy coincidence. It seems like FIRST follows me everywhere, even half way around the world at the most unexpected places.
Here is a picture of the shorts. Probably the coolest souvenir I got. 
http://imgur.com/3RoRG5d