Same here. I started our team back in 2001. I just returned this year to mentor that same team. I love the program and attribute a lot of my career choice to it

Same here. I started our team back in 2001. I just returned this year to mentor that same team. I love the program and attribute a lot of my career choice to it. WOW have things grown and changed. Some for the better but some were... disappointing. The biggest issues are always about money and team size. The program constantly reemphasizes that it's not about winning or the trophies. But that's kind of hard to do when so much attention is placed on aggressive competition and it's the same well-endorsed teams winning every year. Especially with this year's challenge. I've also discovered this questionable practice of teams flying in from far away to participate in a regional where they think they have a better chance. Our team won it's first regional EVER this year. It took us 15 years. We just never had the funds or man hours to build any of the amazing ideas the students had. I'm proud of our students. But I wish there was a way to even the playing field and let students focus on the innovation rather than if their bot will literally fall apart on the field. I think FIRST should stick to full cooperative game modes and ones that don't require lots of refs to determine points. This year is a mess and full of people complaining about points that the refs completely failed to give. For a organization that encourages automation there sure are a lot of things handled by error-prone humans. :)