David and Goliath

This was Samuel’s first robotics competition, FIRST Steamworks. He just spent the last six weeks building a robot with about a dozen other team members. They came from a poor neighborhood; they also had no sponsors. Even though they lived in penury, they were able to come together and build a robot that could shoot balls, collect gears, and then finally climb a rope. This was in comparison to the other teams that were competing, each of which got sponsorships of tens of thousands of dollars and have hundreds of members.

When they arrived at the competition, to their surprise, they were able to take the victory for almost all of their games, a few dozen in total. The team kept on taking the victory for their games, all the way up to the finals game.

Their finals game was against a high school which was sponsored by NASA. The opposing team had received great amounts of money, materials, and tools from NASA; they had access to NASA’s labs and they got help from NASA’s staff. To top it all off, they had over one hundred members due to their sponsors. Sam had thought that it was unfair, how companies choose to sponsor only certain teams and give them as much as they want. He believed that if his team could win this match, if his team could get that golden trophy, that he would prove to the world that even a poor team can win. His would be David and they would be Goliath.

The game was about to begin. Each team’s driver unit was standing behind the line ready to play. Sam and his friend, Josh, were the team’s drivers. They had prepared for this moment a great deal, spending about ten hours practicing driving. The opposing team’s driver team consisted of two identical twin gamers. The twins whole role in their team was to practice driving for the six week build time, spending over three hundred hours just preparing to be drivers, not doing anything else. The referee then exclaimed, “3, 2, 1, GO!”

The drive teams had advanced forward and started controlling their robots. Sam’s team had a simple shooting mechanism, one that would miss every other ball shot and could only shoot about one ball for every two seconds. Meanwhile, the opposing team had a shooter that NASA had created for them, a replica of the one that they sent to Mars earlier that year. It would get all of the balls in, and shot four every second! The opposing team had created a great advantage over Sam’s team, and the whole audience was sure Sam’s team was going to be defeated.

Then Sam and Josh decided to try a different strategy: to only collect and drop off gears, something that their robot had done almost perfectly. With this strategy, they were able to minimize the score gap between the teams. In the last fifteen seconds, both robots had to climb a thick rope approximately one meter off the ground. This was the part that could make or break the advantage that the opposing team had. If Sam’s robot would be able to climb and the opposing team could not, they would take the victory for the competition.






“FIRST Steamworks Field.” Robo Vikes, Wordpress, 7 Feb. 2017, team4206.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/robo-vikes-first-steamworks-strategy/.


Both robots had began climbing, and both managed to reach to the top. Sam was sure that we would lose and his eyes displayed sadness. One of the twin drivers saw the sadness in Sam, he knew he was taking away his victory. The twin realized that this victory would just be another one of many for his team sponsored by NASA, one more trophy to the large collection. However, it would be the first golden trophy for Sam’s team. He was unsure of what to do: nothing and take the victory, or something which would cause his mentor to be mad at him but give a poor team some dignity. The referee had called “3, 2, 1” and at that last moment, the twin commanded the robot to let go of the rope.

Sam could not believe his eyes; the NASA’s team robot had a malfunction at the end which caused for them to let go of the rope, and therefore lose the match! Sam had never felt like he accomplished something in his life up until then. He was able to prove to the world that even a poor team could take down the richest. He was David and they were Goliath. The opposing team’s driver looked at Sam holding his trophy and immediately knew that he did the right thing.