There are many reasons to do your absolute best to finish first and being driven to do so is a very admirable quality, but I would suggest that there is more to VEX Robotics than where you rank at the end of the day. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not about to spew a whole "everyone is a winner!" speech. However, I think for a lot of people, a better definition of winning isn't coming first or winning an award. I try and tell teams I mentor the reality that one day, they will move on from VEX and it is pretty unlikely that the fact that they one this tournament isn't going to be a big deal. So, what you do take away from this program are the experiences that you have, the people that you meet / relationships you make and most importantly, the things that you learn. I've said to several teams in the past, "did you learn anything?" More often than not, the answer is "Yes!" and they can walk away better than they started.
From personal experience, in Gateway my team (AURA) got all the way to the final match, only to fall short because one doubler barrel would not stay scored. We were pretty annoyed about that at the time, but since then we have learned from that experience and we are a much better team now than we were. In time, the outcome of that match will not matter as much as the amazing time I had on that trip with my teammates.
However, I feel that this is only one side of the equation, because, that story about Gateway happened two years ago now. Despite that fantastic experience, we've moved on and asked "what's next?" For a while, that was getting back to worlds and winning the final game of the tournament, but over time that has become less important to us, rather we have improved our mentoring program, developed awesome vision software and taken a lead role in tournament organization, all with the goal of forging our own path. This doesn't mean that we have forgotten about winning the world championships, I'd like to think that some day we'll go back and finally knock that bastard off, but we still recognize all of the great things we have done on the way. I got told an interesting story the other day of this years New Zealand Excellence award winner (5606 - Fielding High School). They had an incident where one of the strongest Auckland region teams played in a local scrimmage and 5606 were beaten resoundingly, to the point where a lot of their members were demoralized and didn't want to continue competing anymore. To their credit, they built themselves back up, regained the confidence and worked hard to develop their region. They were awarded the New Zealand Excellence award and are on their way to the 2014 World Championships in Anaheim, California.
Matt
