FRC Event Tour Guide Speech

This speech I wrote for my GS 1003 class. The theme was 'Tour Guide', where I had to take someone to a place and tell them about three specific things.

I must have really done a good job at providing audience specific details because I remember I got a perfect score on this (a 4!). I had the option to pre-record the speech and it wasn't even the full five minutes, like 15 seconds short, and the professor still gave me a perfect 4. <3

Going to a robotics competition is incredibly exciting. In this first photo you can see a team holding signs displaying their team number, proud of their team identity. Watching your team play in a match is exhilarating and will have you on the edge of your seat, willing your team and alliance to win. When you’re in the stands and screaming and cheering your team on, you hear many other teams doing the same.

Being in the stands and watching matches is an experience. You’re sitting with your team and wearing the same colors, and all these other teams are having the same experience. When you’re on the robotics team, chances are slim that you play or are interested in conventional sports, meaning that a robotics competition would be your first experience rooting for a team you really care about. Seeing teams wear matching colors and sit together like in all of these photos, as well as hearing the crowd roar when good or bad plays are made on the field is so exhilarating and is not to be missed.

In between matches as robots are loaded on and off the field, party music blasts through event speakers. Naturally, this compels people to dance. In this last photo, many are doing the YMCA. Competitions are live streamed, and sometimes there is a camera that catches teams dancing or waving like in the lower left photo. Being a part of the crowd while everyone is dancing and feeling the music creates a shared experience that transcends any differences or hard feelings between teams, and everyone just has a good time.

In the pits, all of the teams and their robots are crammed together, each allotted a hundred square feet of floorspace. You’ll hear the din of other teams using power tools to make changes or fixes to their robots before their next match, or just general conversation during down time. For you extroverted people, it’s easy to walk a couple yards and strike up a conversation and make friends with a team from halfway across the globe.

A lot of time is spent making sure that your robot is in working order. In the lower left photo, you can see like five people crowded around the machine, running tests and problem solving. For you introverted people, you can just focus on the functionality of the robot and hanging out with your teammates; you aren’t forced to go talk to strangers. It’s a big rush of adrenaline when you’re rushing to fix a problem and you have a match to get to in twenty minutes, and it feels great when that hard work pays off.

In the photos on the right, you can feel the joy and excitement of these people after they return from a successful match. Making it past the qualification rounds and doing well during the finals can give you so much energy and you get so excited. Your teammates are there too, just as excited for the team as you, so you celebrate together. Nothing beats the embrace of a friend after all that hard work.

You can create bonds on the field as well as off the field. Being a part of an alliance with random teams during qualifying rounds doesn’t give much time to get to know other teams but you do get to work together. During the bracket however, working with your alliance is crucial to doing well. In this first picture in the top left there’s three team representatives meeting, two of them shaking hands as they enter an alliance for the final matches.

In the last photo in the bottom right, two players from difference teams celebrate as their alliance has won a match. You know that they did well because of that double high five. Even if it’s just for one afternoon, you create a relationship with strangers because you both want to do well, and its much more fun when you celebrate something with someone else.

Getting to play a match and control the robot is very nerve wracking. Adrenaline pumps through your veins as the seconds tick off the clock and you rush to try and score as many points as possible before time runs out. Having to work with another person adds another layer of difficulty. In the top right photo, you can see the two people watching the robot and holding the controllers, watching intently. It’s comparable to playing a video game; of course, you would know because you’re on the robotics team for Pete’s sake, playing the game is incredibly fun yet challenging.

These two and the rest of the drive team pictured in the lower left photo have put in many hours practicing and have grown close over that period; see the hands over the shoulders. If you’re more comfortable during tense situations surrounded by people you know, you can get that on the drive team. Or if you enjoy working with strangers or acquaintances, you can get that too. Either way, being on the field and playing the game at a competition is incredibly fun and instills a great sense of camaraderie.