What is Coopertition?
Coopertition is a core philosophy of FIRST Robotics. But what does Coopertition truly mean?
In spite of having the stronger robot with more on the board, our team would not win tournaments. This was a constant source of frustration for our team early in our robotics journey. The team’s view was if it was a Robotics Competition, then the team with the best robot should be champions. But the top championship awards went to the teams that showed leadership across all program elements.
Somewhere along the way, the team started to realize that FIRST was much #MorethanRobots. That was when we really started down the path of personal and team growth to becoming an Inspire team.
Our Nemesis
In Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game, he talks about the Worthy Rival. This story resonated with me as we had a very similar experience when we started in Robotics.
In our rookie year we knew that the team to beat were the BIB’s. BIB’s were a local neighborhood team who had gone to the World Championships several years in a row. They were the incumbent team inevitably winning Inspire and Winning Alliance at the state championships.
Our team started off focusing on building a very competitive robot. The rivalry between our teams was intense and even though all through the matches we would keep up and even beat them, they always took the top awards.
Their constant and relentless winning consumed us. Beating them became our focus and priority. It would not be an overstatement to say that intense rivalry led to a feeling of animosity. And we made up the usual set of excuses about why they were winning. Excuses like they were the judges favorites.
Why are they Winning?
It took us more than a season to get past focusing on all their awards, and focus on the why. There were many visible clues but we were just not looking for them.
In our second season we faced a crippling electrical issue which caused our robot to shutdown at the State competition. We realized that we could no longer just depend on a strong robot to stand out at competitions. We had to get better in the other elements of the program.
When we started looking at all the other elements of the program such as industry and community outreach, engineering documentation, and even how you tell your journey during Judging – we started realizing that we had much to learn from the BIBs and other top teams.
Our focus shifted from being consumed by our competitors accomplishments to using them to shine a light on where we could improve ourselves. Over the next couple of seasons our team sought to continually improve on every aspect of the program – learning from the top teams we met at local tournaments and at the World Competitions.
We joined our top competitors in outreach events, joint scrimmages and other opportunities to learn from the best. This exposed us to our own teams deficiencies. Every event was a learning opportunity. An opportunity to grow. Soon we started looking beyond what we learnt from others and building on our own ideas. Ideas that helped us set our team apart from the rest of the competition.
Through the seasons as our team improved, the team got recognized at the State and World Championships, ultimately winning Inspire at both levels.
A Worthy Rival – Setting the Bar and tone for Coopertition
As we look back, most competitions and victories along the way is a blur, but we will definitely not forget our worthy rivals. If it was not for the BIBs, our team, Hot Wired Robotics, would not have raised the bar and improved their game, skills and outreach to be recognized on the Championship stage.
I’m also grateful that we could change our focus and look to improve our own team. Good teams devolve into a “win at all costs” attitude when they are so consumed with beating other teams.
During our last season, one of the coaches from another team came over and said – “I tell our teams that we should always compete in the league with HotWired, because they will set the bar for the competition.” It was the best tribute and legacy we could have – that we would do for others, what other top teams had done for us. We had helped set the bar and tone for Coopertition.
“At FIRST, Coopertition is displaying unqualified kindness and respect in the face of fierce competition. Coopertition is founded on the concept and a philosophy that teams can and should help and cooperate with each other even as they compete”
www.firstinspires.org
Coopertition is about actively seeking out Worthy Rival’s who can help us grow, excel and ultimately set the tone to lift others around us to excellence. As our team members move on to their next chapters in life, I hope they will continue to seek out worthy rivals who will help them excel.
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