FIRST Involvement Timeline
• 2006 — FIRST Robotics Competition founding student (team 1712)
• 2007–present — Mentor for multiple FIRST teams
• 2013–2017 — Lead Mentor, Team 1111 Power Hawks
• 2015–2016 — Maryland robotics funding legislation effort
• 2016 — Hosted and ran FIRST Chesapeake district event
• 2017 — Team 1111 first event win
• 2013–present — FRC and FTC Judge
• District Championship Judge
• FIRST World Championship Judge
• Event Manager — FIRST Chesapeake District Events
FIRST Robotics Competition
Event Manager & Leadership - FIRST Chesapeake
My involvement with the FIRST Robotics Competition spans multiple roles including student competitor, mentor, judge, and event manager. Over time, my focus has shifted toward helping deliver competitions that serve hundreds of students and volunteers each season.
FIRST Robotics events are large-scale operations that bring together dozens of robotics teams, hundreds of students, and large volunteer staffs to run multi-day engineering competitions. These events must operate reliably under strict schedules while supporting students, mentors, and technical volunteers.
Since 2013, I have served as a volunteer leader within FIRST Chesapeake, helping coordinate and deliver district competitions for teams across the region.
Event Manager — FIRST Chesapeake
As Event Manager, I am responsible for the successful operation of an entire robotics competition. This includes overseeing event logistics, coordinating volunteers, maintaining schedule integrity, and ensuring the competition environment supports teams and students.
Each event operates as a complex system composed of many specialized volunteer roles including referees, judges, inspectors, field technical advisors, scoring system operators, and pit administration. My role is to coordinate these teams and ensure the event functions smoothly as a unified operation.
Events Led
• Event Manager for four FIRST Chesapeake District Events (2016, 2017, 2018, 2026)
• Assistant Event Manager for FIRST Chesapeake District Championship (2018)
• Volunteer leadership within the program since 2013
Typical event scale:
• District Events: ~36 teams
• District Championship: ~60 teams
• Students per event: approximately 700–1,500 participants
• Volunteer staff: 100+ individuals
• Event duration: three full days of operations
These events serve a large student population and require precise coordination across many volunteer teams.
Leadership Responsibilities
As Event Manager, I oversee the overall event environment and coordinate the volunteers responsible for the technical and operational aspects of the competition.
Responsibilities include:
• Leading the overall execution of the competition
• Coordinating volunteer teams responsible for refereeing, judging, inspections, field operations, and pit administration
• Ensuring match schedules and competition flow remain on track
• Conducting event briefings and coordinating leadership volunteers
• Supporting teams, mentors, and volunteers throughout the event
• Managing issue escalation and ensuring problems are addressed quickly by the appropriate subject matter experts
• Maintaining communication across all volunteer groups and event leadership
While many volunteers specialize in technical areas such as robot inspection or field systems, my role focuses on coordinating these experts and ensuring their work integrates into a smooth and successful event.
Systems Leadership
Running a robotics competition requires coordinating many interdependent systems, including:
• competition scheduling
• volunteer coordination
• judging processes
• inspection workflows
• match field operations
• team support in pits and practice areas
Rather than directly performing technical roles, my responsibility is to lead the volunteers who specialize in those areas and ensure their work comes together into a cohesive and reliable event.
This leadership structure mirrors many real-world engineering environments where success depends on coordinating specialized teams rather than executing every task personally.
Unique Leadership Experience
One of the most unusual experiences in my involvement with FIRST occurred during the first event I managed. At the time, I was also serving as Lead Mentor for Team 1111, meaning I was responsible for both running the competition and supporting my team simultaneously.
Balancing these responsibilities required careful delegation, strong volunteer leadership, and trust in the systems and people involved in the event.
Impact
Through these roles I have helped deliver robotics competitions that:
• Support thousands of students learning engineering and teamwork
• Provide structured environments for teams to test and compete with complex robotic systems
• Coordinate large volunteer staffs working together toward a shared mission
• Maintain safe, fair, and engaging competition environments
These experiences have reinforced the importance of leadership, communication, and operational coordination in complex technical environments.
Judge - FIRST Robotics Competition
In addition to event leadership roles, I have served as a judge for both the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). Judging provides an opportunity to evaluate teams not only on their technical accomplishments but also on how they grow as engineers, collaborators, and leaders.
While robots are the visible outcome of these programs, the true goal of FIRST is student development. As a judge, my focus has always been on understanding how teams operate as organizations: how students learn, collaborate, and develop their skills over time.
Team Attributes Judge
My judging work has primarily been as a Team Attributes Judge, a role focused on evaluating the culture, engineering practices, and leadership structures within teams.
Rather than evaluating the robot itself, this role focuses on the people and processes behind the machine.
Areas typically evaluated include:
• team organization and leadership
• student ownership of engineering work
• collaboration and communication within the team
• mentorship structure and knowledge transfer
• sustainability and long-term program development
• outreach and community engagement
Judging interviews allow students to explain how their team operates and how they approach engineering challenges throughout the season.
Judging Experience
My judging experience includes:
• Numerous FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) District Events
• FIRST Robotics Competition District Championship
• FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship
• Multiple FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Events
These events involve interviewing many teams across multiple judging sessions and collaborating with judging panels to evaluate teams across a variety of award categories.
Evaluation Philosophy
My approach to judging focuses on student growth and team development rather than purely technical outcomes.
Robots are an important part of the program, but they are ultimately a tool used to teach students engineering, leadership, and teamwork. The most impressive teams are not necessarily those with the most complex machines, but those that demonstrate strong student ownership, thoughtful engineering practices, and a culture that helps students grow.
During interviews, I focus on questions that reveal how students contribute to their team, how they learn from challenges, and how the team structures itself to develop future leaders.
Impact
Serving as a judge provides a unique perspective on how engineering education programs operate across many teams and schools. Through these interviews and evaluations, I have had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of students and observe a wide range of team structures and learning environments.
This experience reinforces the importance of mentorship, leadership development, and strong team culture in building successful engineering programs.
Mentorship — Team 1111: The Power Hawks Robotics Team
My longest and most intensive involvement in FIRST Robotics Competition was as the Lead Mentor and Teacher Advisor for Team 1111, the Power Hawks Robotics Team, from the 2013 through 2017 seasons.
During this period, my role focused on building a sustainable engineering program that developed students as leaders, engineers, and contributors to their communities.
Rather than functioning as the primary technical expert, I focused on building a structure where students and mentors could succeed together. My role centered on program leadership, mentor coordination, and creating an environment where students could take ownership of their work.
Program Leadership
During my time as lead mentor, the Power Hawks program grew significantly in both size and organizational structure.
Program scale during this period included:
• Growth from approximately 36 FRC students to more than 60
• Development of three FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams, each with ~12 students
• Oversight of a mentoring staff of 30+ adult professional mentors each season
This structure operated more like an engineering organization than a traditional school club. Students worked in functional subteams supported by professional mentors, while leadership roles existed for both students and adults.
My role was to coordinate these groups, support student leadership, and ensure the program operated according to the team’s mission and values.
Mentorship Philosophy
My approach to mentoring focused on developing students rather than controlling technical outcomes.
Students and mentors were trusted to make engineering decisions within their areas of responsibility. I encouraged strong student leadership and autonomy while maintaining program direction through the team’s mission and vision.
Responsibilities included:
• Coordinating mentor leadership and student team leads
• Supporting student leadership development
• Resolving conflicts and maintaining healthy team dynamics
• Ensuring the program remained aligned with its educational mission
• Supporting branding, strategy, and program identity
When technical challenges arose, I relied on the expertise of our mentors and student leaders rather than attempting to personally direct every engineering decision.
This structure allowed the team to grow into a mature organization where students were responsible for the design and execution of their work.
Competitive Performance
During this period, the team experienced some of the most successful seasons in its history.
Highlights include:
• First competition win in team history (2017)
• Two event finalist appearances
• Qualification for the FIRST World Championship three times
• Regional Chairman’s Award
• Regional Engineering Inspiration Award
• District Chairman’s Award
• District Engineering Inspiration Award
While competitive success was meaningful, the larger goal was always student growth and program sustainability.
Engineering Program Development
A major focus during my leadership was building consistency in how the team approached engineering challenges.
Over time we standardized many design approaches and internal processes so that the team could develop deep expertise in specific areas rather than reinventing solutions each season.
This allowed students to build on prior knowledge and develop stronger engineering intuition over time.
The result was a team culture focused on thoughtful engineering rather than ad-hoc design decisions.
Student Outcomes
The most important measure of success for the program was the long-term impact on students.
During my time with the Power Hawks:
• Approximately 80% of students pursued STEM degrees in college
• 98% of students attended four-year universities
• More than 500 students were directly impacted by the program
These outcomes reflect the broader mission of FIRST: preparing students to become engineers, scientists, and leaders in their communities.
Hosting and Running a District Event
One of the most significant milestones for the team occurred during the 2016 season when we hosted a FIRST Chesapeake district competition at our school.
This event created a unique situation in which I simultaneously served as:
• Lead Mentor for Team 1111
• Teacher at the host school
• Site liaison for the competition
• Event Manager for the district event
In addition to our normal competition schedule, the team intentionally did not compete in the hosted event so that students and mentors could volunteer and help operate the competition.
Many of the event volunteers were students from our own program, creating a unique opportunity for them to see the operational side of a robotics competition.
Managing the event while coordinating school logistics and overseeing the team’s volunteer involvement required extensive delegation and coordination, but it became one of the most meaningful experiences of my time with the program.
Broader Mentorship Involvement
My involvement in mentoring FIRST teams extends beyond Team 1111. I have supported teams on and off since 2007, contributing to student development across multiple programs.
Over time, this mentorship experience led naturally into additional roles within the FIRST community, including judging and large-scale event leadership.
Program Influence
Over time, the Power Hawks evolved from being a competitive local team into a program that other teams in the region looked to as a model for how to build sustainable robotics organizations.
The program structure developed during this period emphasized:
• strong mentor leadership structures
• empowered student subteams
• clearly defined team roles and responsibilities
• long-term engineering knowledge retention
• program sustainability beyond individual graduating classes
As the program matured, numerous teams within the FIRST Chesapeake district adopted similar organizational approaches when expanding their own teams.
In addition to internal growth, the Power Hawks actively supported the broader FIRST community by mentoring other teams and helping them develop sustainable programs.
These efforts included supporting FRC, FTC, and FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams and sharing program structures, mentorship strategies, and organizational practices.
Through these efforts, the Power Hawks program helped influence the development of robotics programs across the region.
Advocacy and Policy Impact
Beyond the robotics field, the Power Hawks program also worked to expand access to STEM education through public policy and advocacy.
During the 2015–2016 season, the team helped initiate legislation in Maryland to support after-school robotics programs statewide.
Working directly with Maryland Delegate Eric Reznik, I served as the primary point of contact and coordinated the effort to introduce legislation that ultimately provided $250,000 annually in funding for after-school robotics programs.
The effort involved coordinating with students, preparing advocacy materials, and working with legislative staff to explain the educational impact of programs like FIRST.
The bill was successfully introduced and passed, helping expand access to robotics education for students across Maryland.
Student Advocacy
The Power Hawks program also emphasized the importance of civic engagement and advocacy for STEM education.
Each year, I led a group of students in visiting Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to meet with members of Congress and advocate for continued support of robotics programs and STEM education initiatives.
These experiences allowed students to:
• communicate the value of robotics education directly to policymakers
• learn how engineering programs intersect with public policy
• develop leadership and professional communication skills
These trips reinforced the idea that engineers and technologists can play an important role not only in building systems, but also in shaping the policies that support innovation and education.
The Power Hawks program demonstrated how a student robotics team can function as a true engineering organization whose product is not just a robot, but the development of capable and confident young engineers.
Lessons from FIRST
My involvement with FIRST has spanned many roles: student competitor, mentor, judge, and event manager. Each role provided a different perspective on how complex organizations function and how engineering culture is developed.
Over time, these experiences reinforced a set of lessons that apply well beyond robotics competitions.
Engineering Is a Team Sport
Successful teams rarely depend on a single technical expert. Instead, they build systems where many people contribute their expertise toward a shared goal.
The most effective robotics teams operate like small engineering organizations. Mechanical design, electrical systems, programming, strategy, branding, and logistics all intersect, and success depends on coordination across these groups.
This mirrors professional engineering environments where the challenge is not simply solving technical problems, but integrating the work of many specialists into a coherent system.
Leadership Means Enabling Others
One of the most important lessons from mentoring and event leadership is that strong leaders do not attempt to control every technical detail.
Instead, leadership focuses on creating the environment where experts can succeed.
Whether coordinating mentors, supporting student leaders, or running large volunteer teams at competitions, my role has often been to empower others to do their best work while ensuring the overall system continues to function smoothly.
Systems Thinking Matters
Robotics competitions are complex systems composed of many interconnected parts:
• teams and students
• volunteer organizations
• competition infrastructure
• judging processes
• field operations
• event logistics
Small failures in one part of the system can ripple outward and affect the entire event.
Working within these environments reinforces the importance of systems thinking: understanding how different components interact and ensuring the overall system remains stable even when unexpected issues arise.
Culture Drives Outcomes
The strongest robotics teams are not necessarily those with the most advanced machines. They are the teams with cultures that encourage curiosity, ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Building a strong team culture leads to better engineering outcomes because students feel responsible for their work and invested in their team’s success.
This lesson applies equally to professional engineering environments.
Engineering Education Is Long-Term Impact
The most meaningful outcome of robotics programs is not trophies or awards, but the long-term impact on students.
Students who participate in these programs develop confidence, problem-solving skills, and leadership abilities that stay with them long after the competition season ends.
Seeing students grow into engineers, scientists, and leaders in their communities is the most rewarding part of the program.
FIRST Robotics Competition is ultimately about building people who can build the future. My involvement in the program has reinforced the value of leadership, systems thinking, and community-driven engineering.
Why I Continue to Volunteer with FIRST
My involvement with FIRST has evolved over time. I began as a student competitor, later became a mentor and program leader, and eventually moved into judging and event management roles that support the broader robotics community.
What has remained consistent throughout those roles is the mission of helping students discover what they are capable of building.
Robotics competitions provide students with a rare opportunity to work on complex engineering problems in collaborative environments that mirror professional engineering teams. Students design, build, test, and iterate on real systems while learning how to communicate, lead, and solve problems under pressure.
Volunteering with FIRST allows me to help create those environments for thousands of students each year.
Whether mentoring a team, interviewing students as a judge, or running a competition as an event manager, the goal remains the same: ensuring students have the opportunity to grow into capable engineers, leaders, and contributors to their communities.
Programs like FIRST demonstrate that engineering is not only about technology; it is about people working together to build something meaningful.