Refining the Words “I Won”

Written by R4Robotics Graduating Senior, Chris Holets:

Everyone strives to win at something. The members of my robotics team, the Rio Rancho Robo Runners (R4), were no exception. R4 was composed of 30 students, most of whom were in high school, and competed in the B.E.S.T. (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) competition. I joined R4 after seeing how life-changing it was for my older brother. To me, being on R4 only meant trying to win the competition. Because of this, I failed to see the many friendships I had gained from being on the team and how life-changing the experience had been. This competition would help me realize how much R4 had impacted my life, and also bring a new meaning to the words “I won.”

I began competition day in high spirits. All of our committees had worked hard up to this day to be as flawless as possible. We had a sturdy robot that worked pretty well, and all of our drivers had practiced for hours. The marketing presentation team, which I was a part of, had worked endless hours on perfecting the presentation. Our work finally began to pay off as competition began.

In the first few rounds of the robot competition, our robot scored a fair amount of points, putting us in the upper half of the scoreboard. The noise in the stadium was already deafening, but I kept cheering. It felt good to be part of something. All of my team joined together to beat on drums, chant, and encourage our robot drivers as they competed. If we kept this up, we would move to the semifinals, but I began to see that we would not win the robot part of the competition. This was because our robot could not score some of the more valuable game pieces. A lot of the teams had made more effective robots than us and were able to score everything. Immediately I began to doubt all of our hard work and ideas that each of us had poured into the robot. If we did not win, then we had just wasted our time all fall.

Towards noon I left the stadium with five of my teammates to get ready for the marketing presentation. After warming up and running through our presentation, we all went to wait by the room. As I stood there trying to remember everything I had to say, my hands began to shake. I could still remember my very first meeting with the marketing presentation team. I had come to this committee as a bundle of nerves who could hardly speak in public. My words had always tripped in my mouth and my legs had threatened to start an earthquake, but each of my teammates had come alongside me and encouraged me when I found it difficult. Sure, I was still nervous now, but I was ready – even excited – to face these judges. We all shared a group hug before going into the room to present.

Our presentation went smoothly. It did not take long to set up our slides on the projector, and we remembered everything we needed to say. When I found myself speaking, my mouth did not trip up and I stopped shaking as bad. After we finished the presentation, the judges seemed impressed. They did not ask any hard questions, which was a relief, and before we knew it, we were done. When we finished, the team was eating lunch and I quickly grabbed something to eat before going back into the stadium to see how the robot had fared.

My heart plunged when I saw what had happened while I was presenting. The robot had not done well and had not made it into the semifinals. Currently, we were scheduled to compete in the wildcard round with 16 other teams to see if we could be one of two teams that advanced to the semifinals. I quickly joined my teammates to cheer for our driver. When the round finished, I shook my head. I could tell we did not make it. Soon after the round, the judges announced the two teams to advance. They did not say R4. Our spirits dropped. It was pretty much over.

With weary moods, we cheered on the remaining teams through each round. At least we could maybe win spirit. Even then we were just a scraggly team of 25 students cheering, which did not compare to the team next to us. There were about 60 of them and they all were putting their hearts into cheering. They even had organized moves and chants. The rest of the robot rounds dragged on for so long. All of us had completely given up. The only reason we stuck around was to hear how our other committees did. Finally, the robot rounds finished and we all waited in anticipation for awards.

Before awards, they played the teaser video for next year’s game theme. It had to do with the power grid going out, and I was already excited for next year. Afterward, the announcer started a whole speech to congratulate everyone for their hard work. I felt left out. We had completely failed this year. When the five-minute speech was over, the awards began. All 70 teams leaned forward in anticipation. We did not place in spirit, engineering notebook, or website. As I suspected the team next to us won spirit, and they cheered louder than before. Next, they began to announce the marketing presentation award, and all six of us held hands. We had placed second. I was ecstatic as we went up to collect our trophy. Our exhibit booth won first place, and its members were all in tears. After they announced robot places, we began to pack up.

The last award was the overall award, which we were not winning. After packing up all of our spirit stuff, we went to the other side of the stadium to take a team picture and then get out before everyone else. As we all lined up for the picture, I could still hear the announcer on the mic. Just as we were about to take the picture, we all tuned in to hear the announcer say “from the New Mexico hub, R4! Are they even still here?” We all ran back with pumping hearts. One thought was shooting through each of our brains. “What had we just won?” When we got there the words “We just won overall!” shot through the team. We had won. I had so many questions. How had we just won? Hadn’t our robot completely failed? I waited for the amazing feeling of winning, but my stomach remained empty. I felt like I had cheated myself. I had given up. I felt so stupid. Sure, the robot had not done as well as we had wanted, but everything else had gone better than we could have asked for. I should have realized it before, but I had been so caught up in the fact that we had failed one part of the competition. In shock, we all lined up to take a photo with smiles on our faces.

This whole ordeal made me realized that I should never give up and showed me that even if all seems lost, it isn’t. We gave up and left feeling down because our robot performed badly. Because we gave up so easily, we lost the joy of winning. We also had failed to realize that we had already won. I had figured my career out, become more confident in myself, and had learned so much. So even if we had lost the competition, we had still won and collected trophies in other ways. Losing or winning the competition is not what mattered, it was whether we had gotten back up and kept going. We would have “won” by not giving up. We would have won by just learning from our failures. Instead, we had given up, causing us to lose the amazing feeling of winning.