Winning While Losing

For those of you who might not have known, this year I accepted a position to coach a robotics team for the Independent Education Program. It has been an awesome experience for me, and I’ve learned so much and hopefully taught the kids just as much. I was asked to share an experience from teaching in our monthly newsletter… in 200 words or less. If you know me at all, you know that was basically impossible for me to do 😛 So I gave them a very shortened version of the story I’m sharing below – but I wanted to preserve the full story for myself because I was so impressed by the experience and it felt worth sharing.

This past weekend, for the first time in the three years that robotics has been part of the Independent Education Program, our FTC Robotics team made it to the Utah State Championships! Reaching this level of competition had been their primary goal all season, and watching it come to fruition was incredible. Our kids learned a lot in their first two qualifying competitions and decided to build a whole new robot in the last six weeks before the championships. The new robot was awesome—it performed all the tasks that they were aiming for. It had a fast intake, was bulky enough to not be pushed around by other robots, and had a beautiful auto-aiming hood that could shoot the balls quickly. Plus, we added giant googly eyes and some slick-looking decals on the sides (obviously the most important part). It was a robot well worthy of the competition at the state championships.

Unfortunately, at the competition, our robot was plagued with a critical flaw. It would disconnect from the controllers and not even move on the field during the match. The kids had put SO much work into that robot: late-night Zoom calls, zillions of Slack messages back and forth, and the full week beforehand where not a day went by that I didn’t have extra kids over at my house to get this robot in shape for state. It was brutal to watch our kids as they sat on the sidelines helpless, losing matches because they weren’t even able to play—not because they had a robot that couldn’t perform the tasks.

If you want to see our robot in action I’ve queued the videos below to our 5 matches – but totally feel free to skip them if you aren’t interested, you won’t miss any of the story. In the last match you can really see how well our robot *could* have done if it had stayed connected. The others are pretty rough to watch to be honest. We’re Team 24087: IRS (Infinite Robot Synergy).

Match 1:

Match 2:

Match 3:

Match 4:

Match 5:

The tournament ended with the top 6 teams choosing which of the other 26 teams they wanted to join them in the finals rounds. Unsurprisingly, we weren’t chosen for any of those final alliances, and like that, our season was over. I walked out of that auditorium feeling heartbroken for our kids. They had poured SO much effort and work into that robot and it was devastating to have all that work come to naught because of one component. It was a critical component, to be sure, but it was still only one part of what they had otherwise built

When I came out, though, I found our students gathered around the practice fields. Even though they couldn’t compete with their robot in the finals, and even though their season was now officially over, they still wanted to tinker with it and play with it. Nearly our whole team was there while the final matches were being played in the auditorium. It wasn’t about the competition; it was about their team and the work that they had put in. They gave students who had different roles on the team a chance to drive the robot around and score. They stuffed a goal full of a ridiculous number of balls—just to see if they could get the physics of it to work right.

They drove the robot around, and every time it would disconnect, they would just jump on the field and restart it manually (something that in a real match would be an inconceivable foul). They were having so much fun that another team that had also been eliminated from the finals saw them, brought their robot over, and asked if they could play too. I watched both teams laugh and play and have SO much fun in that unofficial match. The coach of the team that won the whole tournament came over to me while I was recording (a pause in the middle of her own high-stakes finals) and motioned to me that THIS is what the whole competition is all about. I couldn’t agree more. Winning would have been awesome, of course, but the things that we learned and the positive experience that our kids had mattered SO much more than anything that happened on the official field.

We plan to spend a little more time in the post-season working out those final kinks. Even though it won’t give us a competitive advantage now, the lessons we learn will carry over to make next season more successful. They learned so much, took control of their own learning and turned around a frustrating situation.  I am SO proud of these kids and what they accomplished this season.  Even if we didn’t win the tournament, I think this year was a winning season for these kids.