Celebrating the Impact of FIRST

To the FIRST Tech Challenge program and whoever else's eyes this message finds its way to:

      

       Oh, where to begin? I suppose a brief introduction. My name is Isaac and I am a Senior at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. For years, I would stay after school, sit in the cafeteria, and see this group of kids working on something, which appeared to a robot of some kind. Last year is when I really started to understand. Some of my closest friends are on Walnut's FTC team, 6133 THE NUTS!, and through my school and through some team bragging of how amazing it was, I became extremely interested. Still I decided to ignore whatever this robotics team was, as it didn't seem to be the thing for me. How wrong I was! THE NUTS! went to Worlds that year, and came home to Walnut as heroes. 

       A year passed, and I was asked to help set up for a regional FIRST Tech Challenge competition. I agreed, knowing that my friends were on the team and that I might finally get a little glimpse of what this whole "robotics" thing really was. And so I set up the mountains, the fields, the beacons, and with every passing hour, I learned a little bit more about what the challenge was for this year and what FIRST Tech Challenge was. To be completely honest, I was so interested and excited that I came to practice the next week, learned the ins and outs of the league, our robot, our team, the Manufactury - where we practice - and before I knew it, I was as much a part of the team as anyone else was. I came every day after school with some of the more dedicated members on our team, working on the robot and programming for hours and hours each week. 

     Before I knew it, we had arrived at the Ohio State Championship competition. I was designated head of scouting, as I had composed an algorithm to determine which team meshed with our robot the best for this year's competition. I am still in awe of how much I felt I fit in during that competition. Running back and forth between the pits and the fields, helping with repairs between rounds, and most of all, meeting new people, making new friends and just having fun. After the five qualifying rounds, we were undefeated and in first place. We went through alliance selection, and were very happy as we entered the semifinals. 

     So there I was with the rest of the team, decked out in gold pants (which our team is known for), cape, and a hat, cheering louder than anyone else there. It just felt right. In disaster we dropped connection in the first 30 seconds and we watched with our heads down as our robot sat there, doing nothing, failing not only us, but also our alliance. We lost our second match, and with it, what we thought were our chances for advancing to Super-Regionals. And so we returned to the pits, our heads hanging low, our hearts filled with despair and our minds filled with failure. As we attended the awards ceremony, we knew that our only chance was an Inspire Award, which our team had not won in all five of years of being an FIRST Tech Challenge team. As we sat through the award ceremony with bated breath, we breathed a sigh of relief when they finally reached the Inspire Award. "And the 3rd place goes to......." after a long pause, they announced a team from Michigan. Our hopes dropped, as it was unlucky we were coming in 1st or 2nd. "And second place goes to.......Team 6133 THE NUTS!" There was a moment of silence, as we all took a second to look up and make sure we weren't all imagining things. Then erupted a cheer that I can't even begin to describe the magnitude of. 

    It was in that moment where I first experienced what FIRST is truly about. With tears of joy rushing down mine and many other member's of our team's cheeks, I realized that I loved this. I couldn't imagine what I had been doing the past three years of high school that wasn't this. It truly inspired me. The next few weeks were filled with modifications, tweaks, driving practice, programming sessions and judging practice. Then not five days ago, we departed from school at noon to head for the Iowa Northern Super-Regionals. And what an emotion filled ride it was. The first round of qualification matches, we set a record for the fastest robot flipping of the year - our main driver had missed a ball on the ramp and fell right on his back. Not a good start. The second round was equally as ominous, our right drive train went out due to what we thought was a hardware issue, when in actually, our driver had accidentally pressed the "mode" button on the controller. SO after two rounds, we were sitting in last place in our division, and things did not look good. 

    But as FIRST has inspired us, we kept our heads up and pushed forward. We won our next 7 matches and finished qualifying matches in 6th place, a precarious position. We were the second overall pick for alliance selection, and headed into alliance matches with high hopes. We won a match, then lost a match, and headed into match #3 to move on to division finals. With 30 seconds left, our alliance partner went for a hang and fell over on its back, its battery disconnecting, lying on the ground. With its fall, our hopes of advancing through competition died again. 

   With nothing certain we headed into the award ceremony, needing either to place in an award or to have enough teams double up in competition and awards for us to advance through our qualification rank. When 5th place in the other division was announced as the 24th team to advance, there was nothing we could do except sit in a state of disbelief. One or two more teams and we would have advanced to worlds. It was not long before the awards ceremony had ended and the tears began to stream down our face. Was all our work we had put in worth nothing now? We had one of the best robots at the competition, but here we are, falling just short of qualifying for World Championship. We began to head back to clean up the pits and get ready to leave, and when we got back there, a variety of teams were there waiting, clapping, celebrating, congratulating, exercising gracious professionalism. Many of these teams were some of the people I had gotten so close to over the month and a half I was involved in FIRST. They made it clear that we should be proud of how far we got, and even though the outcome was not one we expected, sometimes in life, things don't go as expected. 

    To end the story, I was only officially involved in FIRST for a little over a month and a half. In those 45 days, I spent countless hours working, and if anything can cause you to cry out of both happiness and sadness in 45 days, then you know it is something you love. So thank you. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to have had the experience I did, thank you for the opportunity to make the friends and experience the love that I felt. FIRST taught me what it is like to be a gracious professional, and that is why I felt the need to send this extended message as a thank you. Even though my experience of FIRST as a participant is unfortunately over, I have been offered by multiple teams to come back next year as a mentor, as a coach, so that I may continue to experience the love that I will miss so dearly, and spread the message that I am communicating in this email. Right now, as I write this message, I find myself tearing up, wishing that it wasn't over already. In my heart I know that FIRST always has a place, always will be a reminder of the fun and love I have never experienced before. THE NUTS! and I will for sure be watching in St. Louis, and if we can't be there in person, you can bet our hearts and minds will be there, pushing other teams so that they can experience what we know FIRST stands for. I myself want to commit to spreading this message to as many youth as I can, and I will surely be doing that through whatever means I can - talks, speeches, conversations, and whatever other opportunity presents itself. 

Thank you, FIRST. 

~Isaac