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?
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.
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. 
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.
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…
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 :).
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!
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.
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!
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!
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.
My involvement with FIRST stemmed back to 6th grade, when I joined my middle school’s FLL team. Now, at the time, I didn’t know what FIRST was. My little mind was not able to comprehend all the talk about Gracious Professionalism and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology stuff my mentor was throwing at me.
So for a few years, I viewed FLL and “The big robots” as two totally separate entities. That would change in 9th grade, when I officially joined FRC. Before that, I learned about FRC at one of the FLL championships at the University of Rochester. There was an FRC team there modeling out and demoing their robot for Triple Play. That’s when they had me. I was hooked. And I’ve been here even since.
So, looking back, I found out about FIRST in 6th grade when the morning announcements told us about the “Lego Robotics Club”.
I started in 2005, when I notice Georgia Tech put up FIRST flyers around campus. Given that I’d kept my local year-round job through the summers while taking extra classes, I didn’t have any internships under my belt. So I started mentoring. I learned quite a bit.
7 years later, after 6 years in the ‘real world’, I find it very concerning that many upcoming adults expect there to be some magic wand that whisks their problems away. This is deduced from what I read in the news, the way secondary education evolved in the mid-2000’s, and from a few interesting peer relationships I’ve had over the years.
I continue to mentor in FIRST because:
- It’s fun (if it’s ever not fun I’ll find another way to mentor youth)
- There’s some satisfaction in knowing I’ve helped upcoming youth become better problem solvers, regardless of whether or not they’re strictly engineers
*]There are slim pickins for leadership roles and non-contract technical training at work, even on my own time. Mentoring FRC is essentially the same as both of those in one package.
I was on the High Schools VEX Robotics team as an 8th grader, one of about 15 people I think. That year, we went to the VEX International Competition, and my teacher got really excited about robotics. She started our FRC Robotics Team the following year, and that was the formal introduction to FIRST. But we sort of said Hello back in my 6th grade year, when my father started a LEGO Mindstorms robotics club at my school.
2008-I just got back from being a student Ambassador that traveled to Japan and my parents signed me up for my high school’s Summer Robotics Camp. I definitely got involved during that camp but still had sleeping issues from my trip. Anyway, it was a 5 day camp that went from 9:00 am to 5 pm and we were able to build a robot to perform that year’s Vex game. It was really fun and I got to work on Krunch’s 2007 Robot which was awesome by the way. It needed some repairing and it was a success. After I got involved with the summer camp I went into our school’s Academy of Engineering. I was surrounded by robotics kids and they welcomed me into the team with open arms.
My older son found out about FIRST from his guidance counselor in his junior year. She thought he would like it. He had to join Team 346 which was 20 miles away. The next year, the 2002 season, he co-founded Team 975 at his school.
I got involved because I’m the Dad with the car. I helped a bit on Team 346 and then became a mentor for Team 975 for 5 years. My younger son was in it the whole time, ever since middle school, as was the younger brother of the other co-founder. Interestingly, the two of them became the lead drivers for the last couple years. Not to mention doing the programming and electrical work. Pays to start young, eh?
I found out about our team in 8th grade, when I became best friends with a girl who had a brother on the team at the time. She had gone to some of their meetings and had a team shirt. I don’t know why, but I thought that that shirt was the coolest thing since sliced bread. So at the beginning of our freshman year, after she assured me that there were things to do with the team that didn’t involve building the robot (I didn’t think I was experienced enough), I went to the introductory meeting and signed up.
All I really remember about the first few months of that fall was that the meetings were extremely boring (learning about the difference between programming loops really sucks when you neither know nor care about programming). I didn’t go down into the shop until the second-to-last work session of the year, and I only went because one of the mentors commented on the lack of girls in the shop and I didn’t have much to lose by going. Somehow, I managed to be totally hooked by the time kickoff came around, and I have been ever since.
Now that I think about it, if I had been able to go to the off-seasons that first fall, I probably would have been hooked sooner, but that’s all in the past now 
Of our two team founders and their two little brothers, three went on to engineering school (one on a FIRST scholarship) and one became a machinist. Unfortunately, my elder son’s studies at VCU were interrupted by a stint in Iraq, where he was killed in action.
When I graduated high school in 1995 I still kept in touch with one of the tech ed teachers there. In the early summer of 1998 (June?) he mentioned he was going to start a team at the school to compete in the 1999 season and if I had any interest in helping the team and get it off the ground. Hence I became one of Team 237’s original founding members. 237’s first meeting was in Sept 1998 shortly after the school year started, I think something like 30 students turned up and a dozen parents along with others like me who had some type of specialty background to help the team and mentor. I think the new team met once a week until build started, we did lose a few people but still had 22 students or so once build was underway. Little did we know what we were getting into designing a robot to pick up floppies and tow the puck around.
I am one of the few that have been with 237 since the beginning. there were 2 years my involvement was very limited due to work and other outside commitments but have always been part of the team and even made a few meetings during those years. In late 1999 I got a job at a robotics company (injection molding) due to being involved with FIRST. I am still there today.
Jason Hartmann,
Team 237, Sie-H2O-Bots (Black Magic 1999, Sun Seekers 2000, Tribe 2001-2011, and back to Black Magic again, 2012)
I first heard about FIRST in middle school. Well, kind of. I knew that my middle school had a LEGO Robotics team, and I knew it was connected to the science club (which I was in), but I didn’t really like the guys on the team. So even though I was interested, I decided not to try it.
Then high school came around. My school was reviving their FIRST team after a three or four year hiatus, and the school’s electronics/woods teacher was trying to rally up enthusiasm for it in her classes. She hadn’t been involved before, but she was really excited about the idea. I wasn’t in an electronics class at the time, but my best friend was. He wanted to go to a meeting. So even though I wasn’t too sure of my ability to fit in or contribute (I wasn’t engineering minded in particular, I liked art and other such frilly things), I made a deal with him that I’d go to a robotics meeting if he went to a drama meeting.
I didn’t like robotics very much at first. It was filled with a bunch of people that were kind of jerks (All of them dropped off the face of the earth when they learned that FRC wasn’t like Battlebots and that it involved doing some work), but I stuck with it because I ended up making a bunch of promises to organize stuff. I ended up becoming the president by the end of my freshman year because I was the person who just organized stuff and made sure everyone was ‘in the loop’.
Competition eventually started, and after that I was hooked. Turns out I was totally wrong about not fitting in, in time the team became pretty much my family. I’ve changed teams around a bit in the past four or five years, but I still love FIRST and the environment surrounding it.
Oh, and theater? Totally not a thing I’m involved with anymore. Turns out my best friend kind of won that deal, oops.