Hello friends,

Today I have a story for you. I know it is quite long, but trust me, its worth reading. One that I feel absolutely shows what FIRST is. My name is Justin Sticht and I have been a part of FIRST since 4th grade (FLL). I am now finishing my second year in college, and as a mentor for Team 3278 Qwerty. You can say I’ve seen many things in my FIRST career, but I don’t think anything amounts to what I recently witnessed.

As I write this, Qwerty is on their way back to Minnesota from Calgary, Alberta after finishing off our 2013 regional. We met many wonderful teams from Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and even our own United States.

The pits looked like they took no space at all in the Olympic Oval. Having only 30 teams at the brand new regional, it was indeed a lot smaller than what Qwerty has in their 4 years, and I in my past 5 years have seen at our home state regionals. As I walked into the pits for the first time, I noticed a kind of pitiful robot still in its bag. There didn’t seem much to it, but I didn’t look too much. As the day rolled on, 2 gentlemen, not dressed in any team uniform, finally entered that pit and swiftly got to work. To this point I had been told about the “One man team”. These 2 people made that team. A mentor and a student, Herman.

I had learned that there was originally more students on the team. However, after other extra curricular activities came up, those other students soon put robotics to the wayside. Herman however made sure to stick to the end.

Word had gotten out about what had happened to Herman’s poor robot. A situation I thought only existed in nightmares. His robot was destroyed during shipping. Not only that, but the programming computer was somewhere in the air still on a plane. As soon as we heard this news, Qwerty student, Korgen jumped into action. Grabbing his computer that had Labview on it, he asked a few coding questions and scurried over to the humbled robot, Team 4625. There he met a few other people from other teams including 771 SWAT and Team RoboDawgs. (there were 3 RoboDawgs teams, but they all claimed to be one entity, so that’s how they will be in this story). While RoboDawgs and SWAT helped the poor rookie team work on a drive train Korgen worked endlessly on the code in labview. All day during practice competitions, and all through the first day of qualifiers, it seemed Korgen was was part of a different team.

I offered as much help as I could building a simple code just to get the robot driving, and showed the other mentor along the way. I had to help Qwerty though and left Korgen to helping out. Soon, not only was there a driving robot, but also a shooting robot.

I talked to Herman just before the second day of qualifiers, and mentioned he should go to the meeting teaching rookies how the alliance picking works. His mentor said that they had to go home, and would have to forfeit. This dissapointed me to no end. Why go through all that stress as Herman, and not get to the fun part?

The day wore on, Calgary finally reached the alliance picking part of the day. All the top 8 teams picked their first partners. Qwerty was the last to join the 8th alliance. As the 5th alliance struggled to find an ally, they finally called in Herman, team 4625. Just as the MC started to say that 4625 would not be joining us, I heard someone shout “wait!” and saw Herman sprinting in with his jacket on and traveling bag resting on his shoulder. He ran right to the alliance and graciously accepted the offer. The crowd went wild. An instant standing ovation. Herman was going to the quarter finals.

Alliance 5 was up to play. I watched the team walk up. Herman, Korgen and the other students who had helped all had matching shirts now. They are a team. They are now Team 4625 Eyes High. Herman was at the controls and played OUTSTANDING defense. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to go further.

Herman still had his chance to shine, while he was awarded the Judges award for his inspirational work. Never in my life have I been more eager to jump to my feet and shout in excitement. Herman went to accept the award in front of a roaring crowd.

Now whenever I see Korgen wearing his eyes high shirt, I will always remember this weekend. Eyes high has inspired me so much. The people that dropped everything to help Herman deserve a huge thank you for their showing of gracious proffesionalism that has not been matched. Herman had the experience of a lifetime, while making new friends to last that long. I am so proud to have witnessed this and hope to just share this story of FIRST. Never have I been more proud of a robotics team. Good job Eyes High.