Following this thread we see a lot of victories related to the robot. We at the Innovators feel our biggest victory is with our alumni.
After 4 years we have 17 alumni
16 are in college
15 are studying STEM fields
Scholarships related to our club and FIRST = $149,000
All scholarships combined (club/ First +scholastic +sports) = $788,000
Currently the club/First scholarships exceed our club budget for the first 4 years.
Our team reached most of the goals we set out this year and made tremendous improvements across the board. But to me our biggest victory was the most unexpected. We set out to work more cooperatively with other teams in all aspects, stepping it up each competition. In the end, we helped at least two rookie teams become highly competitive in their division, and we discovered how rewarding the effort was.
The thing I’m most prowd of over the past few years are the friendships we have developed with some of our fellow Virginia teams. We have become very close with a couple, and I hope we developed more in the coming years.
1676 has had alot of wonderful things happen this year
-We mentored 6 FLL teams
-We kept a good relationship with a lot of our old friends and ended up making a bunch of new ones this year as well.
-We won the chairmans award after not winning it since 2009
-We won our second consecutive Engineering inspiration award
-We qualified for the world championship
-We heavily improving our robot from our first district all the way up to championship making it alot better each time(week one was interesting for us to say the least).
-And we survived aerial assault…oops my bad aerial assist 
The list goes on and on but these are the ones that come to mind.
Team 1991’s accomplishments:
- Team captain accepted to MIT
- Made it to the finals for the second time ever
- Won our first competition as alliance captain
- Ranked in the top ten at both of our districts
The biggest victory this year was through all the adversity we faced, our kids never put their head down. They dug in and kept pushing.
A little story, the year was 2014, and there was snow everywhere… We lost 8 days during build season, while trying to catch up on a schedule where we were a few days behind pace to start. This led to our first district attendence with green code and green drivers. The shooter was not tuned in and autonomous untested. The friday of the the first district we spent mostly figuring out how to get mobility points in autonomous.
I was so proud of our programming students and how they kept iterating and plugging away while the frustration built. By the last of the qualification matches saturday we had a working high ball autonomous with mobility options for distance! The whole team rallied together to get the robot working while in between matches. However, it was too little too late. We thought we demonstrated a good inbounding robot with defense, but it went under the radar and for the first time we were not selected for eliminations in a district.
Over the weekend between the first two districts, our human player lost a close relative. The students rallied behind him to support him and his family. He was able to attend the last Saturday of our second district.
Again the kids did not put their heads down but kept working. The second district event the auto was working and we never missed a shot, except for the two times attempting a two ball auto. Facing a tough schedule (played a district finalist twice, and another district winner twice) we went 6-6 and were selected by the third alliance captain! We made it to the finals but lost while dealing with alliance mechanical issues and some questionable technical fouls, oh and won an industrial design award! Too little too late again, not enough points were gained to reach MSC.
Seeing that we had budgeted for MCS and Champs we were able to slide into one more district. This time the auto worked flawlessly going 12-12 during qualifications. We ended up 9-3 and the third alliance captain! Losing in the semifinals to a very well meshed alliance, but we walked away with the engineering design award!
If you would add up the points for the last two districts we attended, we were a top 20 robot in FiM.
I could not be prouder of the students of Team 85. They demonstrated the essence of hard work and perseverance paying off. We went from not being looked at, to a top 3 pick, to a top 4 robot. There was no blaming anyone but ourselves for the situation, and the students took ownership of that and kept pushing. That is the victory.
It is great to see that there are so many teams that are proud of what they accomplished this season even if they didn’t win any awards. I know that being a part of a team that didn’t win any awards this season, we were still proud of everything that we had done. This season, there were a lot of things that happened for team 708, both good and bad. We didn’t set any team goals this season that I remember but we definitely accomplished more than we thought was originally possible.
Some of our team victories that we accomplished this season include:
-Getting our own classroom instead of working out of a closet on the third floor.
-Hosting a very successful week 1 MAR District event
-Hosting a successful Penn FLL Qualifying Event during week 2 of FRC build season
-Hosting an FLL Summer Camp
-Demoing our robot at the Pennsylvania State Capitol and being recognized by both the House and the Senate for what we do in spreading the word of FIRST.
-Running 2 FTC teams
-Mentoring 3 FLL teams
-Attending outreach events to spread the word of FIRST and allowing community members to drive and operate our robots
-Have semi-nice looking wiring compared to past robots.
-Having a robot that could pick up off the ground quite easily, shoot, truss and play defense.
-Offered build space to team 341 when the weather was bad and they weren’t allowed in to their build space.
-Had more team spirit than ever before and we actually cheered for our team when they were on the field.
-One of our seniors along with the help of a few others worked their butts off to make a scrapbook for Chairman’s to make sure that everything we do that doesn’t have to do with the robot is noticed. This same person/group of people wrote the essay for Chairman’s and also Woodie Flowers.
Overall, we definitely had a lot of fun this season and even though all of our efforts were not noticed by the judges at any of the events we attended, we all know that we had a really great season. Our head mentor, Zygmont, even told us after we weren’t picked to compete in eliminations at MAR Champs that he was really proud of everything that we did this season not only with the robot but with everything else that we did for others. Therefore, some of our biggest accomplishments had nothing to do with our robot but what we do as a team to spread the word of FIRST.
I am really proud to be a part of team 708 and with it being my senior year, I am really glad that I got the opportunity to experience World Champs in St. Louis with my fellow seniors and volunteering to ensure that everyone that was competing had the time of their lives and supporting our fellow MAR teams. We had a great season and it is sad to see my time on the team come to an end but I will definitely be back to see what the following years have to bring the team.
Personally, I am happy that my local network has expanded. Over the last few years, I have gotten to know more people in FIRST, and the last two years, the PNW in specific. Keeping in touch with those teams and their mentors/coaches is valuable. It’s nice to hear what other teams are doing and hear other people’s opinions on hot community topics.
I’m also really happy with our new show and where we’ve gone with it. It’s been a lot of fun this season. I enjoy the fact that I get to hang with my friends and chat as usual, but that we have found a way to do so in a manner that gives back to the community.
Most importantly, this year I grew a lot as a mentor. The end result of what we are trying to accomplish is often irrelevant. I felt like I did a better job of listening and asking questions. It is more rewarding to direct people to a solution, nudge them along the way or help them identify the tools they need to be successful. Due to that, I feel much closer to a handful of the students I worked with. I hope they feel the same way, because in the end this is what it’s all about. If we don’t have a meaningful impact on our community, team and students, if we fail to convey our passion and illicit inspiration then none of what we do has purpose. It is really difficult to inspire someone, I don’t think there is any hard-defined process, but I hope that I can say I did.
Another 4 Banner season was a bonus, but not the highlight.
2011- I was barely involved with the team, but I had one part on our mini-bot that I came up with. Our mini-bot was top-notch at our first regional that year and a large part of the reason we ended up in the finals.
2012- At our first event, the team had a miserable showing as our shooter wasn’t working and our bridge lowering mechanism wasn’t functioning. I had designed the bridge lowing mechanism and I was distraught as to why it didn’t work!
I came to find out that the one I designed wasn’t on the robot for some reason, and when it was attached at our second event, we ended up winning the event as a feeder bot- that required crossing the bridge every match 
2013- We finally had a robot that worked by stop-build day!
We finally got to partner with our friends at 2791 for eliminations!
We seeded second and first at our two regionals and went undefeated at the second!
We partnered with our friends on 195 for the second year in a row in eliminations.
We ended up in eliminations at championships!
We beat 987 is a close qualification match at championships!
We posted the highest losing score in the world when we lost in quarterfinals at championships- a feat that would last for 10 minutes, until the alliance that beat us would lose to the eventual world finalists.
The robot barely broke down at all throughout the season!
We were invited to IRI!
2014- We had record numbers of freshmen join the team.
Our student engagement was better than it ever has been, and anyone that showed up to the meetings felt like they had work to do, despite our large team size.
At our first regional, we were able to partner with our friends from 229 for the first time, and bring them to championships!
In finals of our first regional, one of our bearings in the drivetrain shattered, rending us with a 5-wheel drive for the final match. Despite this, with some quick work from our programmer, our two-ball auto worked perfectly AND we worked perfectly for teleop.
As human player, my last second inbound won us one of our eliminations matches.
At our second event, we were faced with a triple-header of qualification matches and qualification match replays Saturday morning. We survived those three matches, almost winning the third one, even though it was our toughest match of the day.
The strategies we came up with at both our events worked beautifully.
The passing method I came up with at our second event became a standard of passing in Archimedes (the “give and go”).
We almost beat 2056 and 548 in the same qualification match- playing our strategy perfectly, despite the fact that their robots were better. That included a catch!
A catch won us a qualification match at championships!
We got to once again play with our friends on 195 in eliminations, this time at Championships.
We once again made eliminations at championships, and lost a very close set of matches to the divisional finalists.
I’ve had a crazy four years on The Rocketeers, earning more banners in my four year period on the team than my team has ever earned in any other four year period.
We’ve been through ups and downs (lots of downs), and we’ve learned quite a lot.
I’m extremely sad to go, but I hope the next generation of Rocketeers learns from our mistakes and our triumphs and improves even more for next year.
I’ll be seeing some of you out in Rochester next year!
I did more this season.
I’m not usually the one to take charge and go out and do stuff. I like to follow people in fun projects, but this year I don’t know what happened. I actually took charge and did things on my own, sometimes. I had the chance to show the community what some students could do in period of two and half days if they were given some cameras, steadicams, mics, and a computer and I did. The work progressively got better and better as the weeks went on and I’m proud of the team that I put together to help me accomplish this and to all the great reception we have received.
As Navid said:
Meeting new people and seeing new friends you met last week every week was AWESOME. It felt nice to know people from across the state who you get to hang out with at events. I ended up volunteering for over 7 events, 6 of which were events here in the PNW, and got to work with an awesome group of students and adults on A/V at Blue Field District Events (the first paragraph on this pastebin will explain what I mean) for 6 awesome weeks.
This season has been awesome, but I have to say that I’m expecting next season to be even better.
Really tough to beat these. Great work!
wow - I really needed to read this tonight. I’m exhausted from our districts, and feeling very discouraged.
Being from a poor, small, rural high school that has little to no access to engineering professionals who are willing to help mentor our team is hard. We go to competition and marvel at the beautiful robots that were designed by professionals (some actually built by students.) We see chairman’s award videos that were either professionally produced or produced with equipment that we could only dream of using. We try our best but always the brass ring is outside our reach, or so it seems.
But the bigger successes are intrinsic to our team:
STUDENTS design, build and program the robots with very little adult help
STUDENTS write all the grants we need for our small ($10,000) team budget
During most years, we have 10% of our student body on the team.
We have had a 100% HS grad rate on our team since we started in 2007.
We have had 100% of our team either go on to college or join the military since they graduated, some to MIT, CalPoly, Stanford, etc.
We do things not because we think it would be good for the Chairman’s Award, but because they fit our community needs and they are fun. We have recycled over 60 tons in the past 4 years, about 1/3 of it e-waste. We host a Nerdapalooza game night and help with a Sciencepalooza and have a blast, while helping make STEM more fun.
There’s lots more…but I guess I just needed to get some of that off my chest for now. Also feeling discouraged because our school admin is discontinuing our woodshop and drafting programs, which have provided a home for our team. We are trying to find options and just hoping to survive. It’s hard to go to competitions and see so many teams that are so flush with money and mentors. Just have to keep seeing that the brass ring isn’t as important as the successes that being on the team gives our students.
- Held a summer robotics camp that served 60 students AND raised funds for our 2015 season.
- Started 5 elementary robotics teams and 5 middle school robotics teams. Both age levels were highly competitive!
- Doubled the size of our FRC team.
- Designed and manufactured our own drive base for the first time in team history.
- Completed a very professional looking sound robot two weeks prior to stop build day.
- Created our first Business plan. We will use as a foundation for work to do in upcoming seasons.
- Received the judges award at our first district contest because of the above items…The student representatives knocked it out of the park when the judges visited!
- Recovered from a dreadful first day in Kokomo (robot lost connections in three of our first four matches) to make it to the elimination rounds.
- Increased team sponsorship including an anodizing sponsor.
- Learned much and had GREAT FUN in the process!
Just a bit curious here…all the FLL teams we’ve helped with or others have started in our rural community have disbanded, after only a couple of years, because there’s no mentor support.
It seems a bit of a waste of energy for us to try to set up workshops to attract kids to FLL, when we have no adults to lead them.
We concentrate on building good relationships with our sponsors, doing lots of community service projects that are relative to STEM, and just hoping that we can get more parents hooked on participating.
I’d like to see a thread on how we can get more industries to contribute mentor time…our local industries give us money, but they keep their engineers on a rotating swing schedule, which makes it hard to get them to volunteer, even when their kids are on our team.
We have been awarded the Gracious Professionalism award three times since 2008, due to helping teams in distress.
2008, Wisconsin Regional - This was my senior year and our robot, while not great, was solid. It never had any failures, so during our second competition of the year, our pit crew spent more time working with and helping other teams with their robots than our own. In the end, we had helped 7 teams get robots onto the field.
2010, BAE Systems Granite State Regional - I was not with the team at the time, but for the past few years, we had often packed our pit with everything imaginable for the strict purpose of loaning parts out to other teams. This has been our culture for the past couple of years. If any team needed anything we would be the first to provide it.
2015, NE Pioneer Valley District Event - We have a lot of history with one of FIRST’s Hall of Fame teams - Team 151, the Tough Techs, from Nashua, NH. Back in 2001, 166 lost their sponsorship and approached 151’s primary sponsor, BAE Systems, to ask for support. Not only did BAE provide sponsorship, they also invited us into their facilities to work. This meant that 151 would now be sharing their long-time work space with another team. Instead of being resentful of the situation, they welcomed 166 with open arms and helped breathe new life into 166. Neither team works out BAE Systems anymore, but it was an important step in reviving our team.
We returned the favor this past year as, long story short, 151 completely lost access to their school’s well-equipped machine shop and were now working out of a space that, to my understanding, was a teacher’s office. Given our history with them, we invited them to our work space at Merrimack High School and offered to machine parts for them. We also worked with their administration to help them regain access to their machine shop.
We didn’t help 151 in hopes of winning a trophy. We helped them because they had done the same for us in the past and would absolutely do the same for us in the future. In fact, we gave one of our trophies to them because they earned it as much as we did. It was a trophy they had deserved and had missed since 2001.
Our biggest victories though, come every night when an alumni mentor arrives to work with the team. A large number of our mentors at this point are Chop Shop alumni and that speaks volumes to what FIRST is about.3
One last thing: Despite all of the snow that this region experienced, we were able to get a fully-functional robot with a completely working autonomous mode before the end of build season. I don’t think our team has ever had a working autonomous heading into our first week of competition.
Victories are keeping the FRC program running at BVT for 21 years. Making sure the administrators and school committees are happy with the program.
Running a FLL tournament since year 2000. Helping out the 13 towns middle schools that feed into our regional high school. (64 teams compete each year.)
Seeing over 1500 students in those years become better thinkers and problem solvers.
Lastly building all those robot in the 6 week time frame and live to tell about it. Thanks to being in a Vocational High school were all the work gets done during the day.
My personal objective is for my team to make a robot that is weird but extremely effective and has one feature that virtually no other robot has.
As a team we strive for sustainable improvement through the season and year-to-year, even if it’s only a small improvement.
It is sometimes tough to see the top-tier teams and their robots and how incredible they are only realize that your team may never get to that point no matter how hard you work. This is where developing satisfaction from within is key, not only in FIRST but also in real life. I really appreciate the sentiment of this thread as it is something I have also struggled with as a student and as a mentor.
Well, I’m new, new to FRC, and new to mentoring a team. Surviving my first build season (yikes!) and first regional competition counts as a victory, I think!
What do I count as a victory this year? (At the risk of tooting my own horn) Helping a student understand what FIRST is really about. Teaching him that it’s not about our robot performance or how big, little, or “shiny” each individual’s contributions were to it, but that it’s about teamwork, cooperation, and above all, learning. Learning about engineering, communication, working with different personalities. Learning and discovering your own skills and passions and aspirations.
I treat it as an incredible privilege to be in a position to teach this stuff to students, and to learn so much in the process!
“I’m not here to build a robot. I’m here to build students.”
For the first time in the five years that this team has existed, we
- bagged a functional robot!
- were on the radar to be picked for a few alliances!!! (doesn’t matter that we didn’t get picked, we were all excited anyway)
- were the ONLY team to have a mascot wave the flag before our matches!
- were in the running for awards!!! (we didn’t win any, but it was SO cool to know that we might have)
- had an autonomous program!
We may not have won any trophies or medals, but we are still victorious.
My victory? Working with my wife and brother (all of us mentors) to keep our team’s one over-achieving but under-socialized student away from the drive team yesterday afternoon, so that they could calmly use the marvelous robot he designed to win a regional competition.
Sometimes, it’s all about the people.