Back Our FRC Team 10600 Gets Nominated for Rookie All-Star: What an experience
My first time at an FRC event, and our team's performance at the event.
3/10/2025
Now's a good time to mention I haven't really dabbled in robotics. I've heard of it, as most people would have, but I haven't had much of a chance to interact with robots or play around in a robotics competition. This year, I had that chance. The team I am a lead of, team 10600, participated in the Mount Olive FMA event, and we were nominated for Rookie All-Star. In my opinion, the best part was meeting all these new people, and seeing people work on their robot in real time. It was unlike an experience I've ever had before.
As a rookie team, and especially as a community team, we've struggled with a lot of things. We don't have any school-backed funds, and getting sponsorships to sponsor the remaining cost of our build was a struggle. We were still able to make it though, and we entered Mount Olive with... a robot. Now obviously, our robot wasn't the cream of the crop. It had its fair share of issues. But just getting to a real competition for the first time, with a robot that would compete with everyone else, was a feeling within itself.
Our robot didn't perform the best during the competition. We had a couple of issues, most of which manifested from our inability to be able to continuously test modifications to our robot. We didn't have the name "Two Steps Ahead" for nothing though, and we persevered through every obstacle that came our way. When an issue arised, our pit crew got to work fixing it. If a wire came loose, we reinforced it. If our auto went the wrong way, we modified it. When our algae arms were causing issues, we made the best of our situation and disabled them with zipties.
While we weren't able to make it into playoffs this time around, I don't doubt that our team will continue to improve on our robot's design in the two weeks we have until our next competition. We are, after all, "always ahead, always advancing." We come up with solutions for every problem that sticks in our way, and we will come back next competition with a better, stronger, robot.
The best part of the competition, in my humble opinion, was the people. Never have I ever before met this many people at an event. Never have I ever SEEN this many people in an event. This was my first time in an FRC event, and I met so many people from so many teams. Our team went around and collected pins from neighbouring teams, and we all showed so much support to and from each other.
In fact, that's one of the best things about FRC in general. Since before the season started, our team has been able to gather so much help, from teams like 1676 Pascack Pi-oneers, or 555 Montclair Robotics, or all of the other teams that have been able to provide us with information to a practice field.
Being in FRC is like being in a knit community, where everyone shares a cool common interest and works to further their passion. In FRC, people don't just build to improve their team, they offer to help others. I'd like to personally thank the two programmers that came to our pit to help us out with our auto, you guys were so good and saved us! Such a community really is so cool to see.
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