Written by: A collaboration of the team
What is the Leadership Award?
The Leadership Award, formerly Dean’s List, is an award given to exceptional students who promote FIRST values within their team and community. Mentors on a team are invited to nominate two students, who must be sophomores or juniors, for this award. The mentors write an essay to give to the judges, and the students have an interview at a competition. Our candidates will be interviewing at North Star. We wish them luck!
Now, “promotes FIRST core values” is a pretty vague award definition, so what does that look like for us? When we nominate students on our team, we are looking for not just the smartest or the one who can rattle off our talking points the fastest. We look for students who go above and beyond with their passion and care for our team and every person on it.
Our nominees this year are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. Our team truly would not be the same without them.
So, Who are We Sending?
Drumroll please…
You’d better be drum-rolling it
Our team is overjoyed to announce that we nominated Ally L and Charlotte S for this award! They are both juniors on the team and have been a part of Talon for 3 years, but have been involved with FIRST much longer. For a quick overview (you will get MUCH more detail later on):
Ally – One of our lovely build captains, the sole reason our room has not descended into the most chaotic mess imaginable, one of the best at training there is, practically lives in room and uses that time to make everyone feel welcomed and ready to learn, and just an absolutely lovely person!
Charlotte – One of our lovely business captains, took up captainship as a sophomore (generally, captains on our team must be juniors or seniors) due to a sudden change in leadership right before the season (she ended up SOLO CAPTAINING by the end of the season, holy locked), supports everyone, especially the business leads, and is also just one of the nicest people you can meet!
Also, it feels important to note that they have been besties long before joining the team, making the fact that they both got nominated just that much sweeter.
Ally L
Ally joined the team as a freshman and brought a small army of her friends onto the team as well, doubling the number of girls. She clearly had good judgment, as all of us are now in team leadership and love the team a lot.
From the start, Ally has always been a constant, positive force. Whether it’s her thirst for knowledge, willingness to step up wherever and whenever she is needed, or any of the other incredible things she brings to the team, both in and out of room. While Ally certainly has a family legacy on the team, it is far from the most notable thing about her.
Supreme Surveyor of Spreadsheets
Before she was a captain, she was our Scouting and Strategy lead (this was pre-deputy, so we had specific build leads). This was a great role as it allowed her to make full use of her love of spreadsheets and data. While it can be a little scary to see what she can do with a Google Sheet and some free time, it is the good kind of scary.
(Side note: competitive spreadsheeting is a thing apparently, y’all can learn more here (BUT FINISH THIS BLOG FIRST, IT’S PRETTY PEAK)).
One of our deputies recalls being used as a messenger pigeon. This was a very serious and grand task!
In her time as a lead, she showed a great dedication to the team, working overtime to ensure that data was able to be collected and would be as useful as possible to the drive team. She started many systems that we still use today, including an organized way of getting data on the teams in our matches to drive team and scouting with QRScout, a new system that fits our needs perfectly.
A great example of how much she has given to our team was during our Alabama regional last year. Due to weather difficulites we had to shove all of the qualification matches into one day, making it run for over 10 hours. That whole time, she stayed committed to scouting and checked in on her teammates to make sure everyone was doing well. Despite how stressful this event was, she kept going and helped us strategize and stay afloat during both the literal and figurative storm that was raging.
This year, Ally has taken her Scouting and Strategy skills to be a fantastic Drive Coach for our team! We’ve only had one competition so far, but she worked amazingly with her fellow drive team members to keep things going even when hope seemed lost. Even though things weren’t going ideally for us, she still made sure we were helping other teams whenever we could!
Rock Climbing Isn’t the Only Way She Reaches Great Heights
“Ally is like the most approachable person ever when you have questions and stuff.”
One trait of Ally’s that has remained consistent and wonderful throughout her entire time on the team is how approachable she is. As someone who has asked her a wide variety of questions that are seen as common sense by anyone with any FRC experience, she is fantastic at explaining concepts clearly and simply without making the asker feel dumb.
She can make anything fun and engaging. While I still have not fully forgiven Riley for making us sand that hexshaft for 3 days, her presence made the entire thing fun! This attitude extends to training as well; she makes sure everyone who walks into room knows that she is someone they can come to for advice and things to do. She seems to have a never-ending well of patience, regardless of how much or little experience someone has with their projects.
Build? Business? Nah, She’ll do Both
With the sheer amount of hours Ally puts into build, one would assume she doesn’t do anything for the business side of our team. WRONG, she’s locked on that. Her spreadsheet skills extend to the business side as well. She put together a massive spreadsheet to track progress on potential new sponsors and found a ton of companies to look into!
She helps out a TON with our Girls Coding Camp each summer. Her ability to break concepts down easily and explain well makes her a perfect asset to the program. The passion she has for STEM shines through in everything she does, and it gets people excited and ready to learn!
Additionally, she is always on top of any task that needs her. Need a graphic to give out to sponsors? Done. Need a section of the blog post written because nobody else did it? Done. It is amazing to see the lengths she will go to support each and every member of the team, no matter what it is. All you need to do is ask, and you’ll have a strong ally in any project you need. When we needed a way to keep track of our business events, she made the base of our Business Binder! She then made a similar robot process binder and served as a great resource to the judges, helping us earn the Quality Award.
A Soup-er Amazing Captain, Friend, and Person!
Knowing all of this, it should surprise nobody that Ally is now a team captain. She has helped pioneer some significant changes to our team leadership, the introduction of deputies, and has kept things running smoothly all season. While this season has had some interesting challenges (HOW did those parts end up in Kansas), she has kept a positive attitude and worked with the rest of our build leadership to keep things on track.
Even outside of our teammates, Ally works to get people learning more and excited about robotics. Look around at any outreach event, and you will see her getting on the ground to talk to kids at their level about our robot! Within FRC, she is always down to help other teams, with tasks ranging from building bumpers to leading a now-annual multi-team strategy discussion. It is clear that she is here for all. She will always meet people where they are at and is not afraid to slow down and help everyone get to the best results possible together.
She is one of the most down-to-earth and sweet people I’ve ever met, but she doesn’t let a quiet demeanour get her overlooked. Her wide range of knowledge in every area of the team makes her a powerful force in whatever she sets her mind to. On our team, she has worked to build a culture where everyone is respected, and all ideas are heard.
“Robotics is a hard activity to step into if you because you don’t really know what you’ll give to the team, but Ally reminds you that it’s going to be alright.”
She’s Read Every Book on the Planet, Still Wants to Learn More
I am past 1.5k words, and have not even started on Charlotte yet, so it might be time to wrap this section up. Believe me, our team could write a series of New York Times bestselling novels about how great Ally is.
A final note we want to share on Ally is her love of animals. Show a picture of anything cute and fluffy, and she will just about jump on a table with glee. That sums up how much joy and positivity she brings to our team. In the hopes that she reads this and smiles, here is a collection of cute animals:
Charlotte S
Charlotte joined the team right alongside Ally and has been making waves in business from her first year. If I had to pinpoint Charlotte’s strongest skill, I would say she is the most people-person to ever person! We often refer to her as the team’s “designated extrovert,” and she has EARNED that title.
Through constant connection and building/maintaining relations both in and out of the team, she has helped us reach tons of people, make tons of money, and find tons of enjoyment within Talon!
Putting the FUN in Team Funding
If Charlotte wanted to, she could probably convince the moon to sponsor us. Since her first year on the team, she has remained locked in on getting us enough money to build our very expensive robots! Even as a freshman, she found her love of Fundraising and worked closely with the lead to do as much as she possibly could. This hard work paid off as she was leading it next season.
In her time as a lead, she put on a record-breaking Robots and Rotini, which was made especially impressive due to us having lost a major sponsor of the event that year. This meant she was tasked with finding new resources for us to draw from, especially to get desserts. Due to this, a beautiful friendship with Cub Foods was born! She is now on a first-name basis with the manager of our local Cub. I am convinced she could take over the world solely by finding the right people to ask about it. When she had to step up midway through her term, she made sure the next Fundraising lead was all set up and ready to take over!
Goat-Loving Business GOAT
If you want to see a very happy Charlotte, show her a fainting goat. If you want to see an even happier Charlotte, show her our team. She has had a very unique experience with us, to say the least, from having to take over a captainship role right before the season, to her co-captain leaving later that season, to now remaining a captain throughout it all.
Each business captain has 3/6 business subteams assigned to them; this is their “split” and where they focus their efforts. They support each lead in their split by attending their meetings and doing weekly check-ins on how things are going for them and their subteam. Charlotte’s support does not stop with just her split; you can see her helping out in any and every way she is needed!
As Sweet as the Desserts She Bakes!
While her knowledge of all things business can seem a bit intimidating, Charlotte is anything but! She is one of the kindest and most approachable people on this planet. If she were to randomly start radiating rainbows and sparkles, I would not be surprised; she is that full of love and good vibes. Despite all the sunshine and rainbows, she has a serious side when needed; it’s more than her interest in all things mortuary science and horror movies (we still need to watch Old). Charlotte’s ability to lead and network is just as powerful and scary as Ally’s love for spreadsheets.
Whenever we need a friendly face, she’s the one we call on! Her ability to engage anyone in anything is something everyone can learn from. Within our team, she works to make sure everyone on the team feels welcome and involved. Every time she goes to room, she talks to as many people as she can and gets to know the entire team. I think she learned everyone’s names faster than our mentors!
Some of my favorite memories on the team are getting up to some of the most random side quests with Charlotte! Her incredible people skills, mixed with her willingness to try anything out makes her someone who is always up to something. You can look away from her for a few seconds, and when you turn back around, she’ll have befriended three companies and is now helping a kid play with our robot! If you think I’m exaggerating, let me tell you a story about some lions playing bingo:
Lions Club
It was a bright summer’s day. Our head mentor had come to us with a proposition: Lions Club needed volunteers for their big bingo fundraiser. A few of us on the team made an “I’ll go if you go” pact, little did we know this one agreement would grow into something much bigger…
We got there ready to help wherever we could. Now armed with Schooner Days shirts and aprons stuffed with bingo cards, we thought we were prepared for anything that could happen that day. After a quick pit stop to grab a bucket of cheese curds, it happened. A classic Charlotte side quest.
Bingo calling is not what people sign up for when they do robotics. But we’re not about being what you expect here at Talon, especially when Charlotte has a say. She had been networking with the Lions Club members present at the event. Please note she was doing this while still expertly balancing all the volunteering responsibilities, and they loved her. This led to a very interesting opportunity. She got to call a round of bingo and tell the people there a little bit about robotics!
This was the beginning of a beautiful partnership with the Lions Club. They support our team, and we continue to give back to them through demos. Additionally, Charlotte now helps run a Leos Club (think Lions Club Jr) chapter in our school!
Oh Captain My Captain
Charlotte has kept up the momentum throughout this year! While it seems like she’s set a sky-high bar, she finds new ways to raise it every day. Wherever there’s a gap on the team, she’s there and ready to make sure things keep moving.
She also took on a very active role in our Girls Coding Camp, making sure things stayed on track and that the entire camp ran smoothly! This doesn’t stop throughout the season; she remains ready to jump in anytime someone needs help. We had a couple of bumps in the road with our IMPACT presentation prep. She saw this and, even though it was not her direct responsibility, she worked closely with the subteam to ensure things kept on going.
“Charlotte wears two hats at all times. Her business captain, leader of the moment hat and loving advocate for those she cares about. I have seen her wear almost all the hats of our business side and it is clear to almost everyone on our team: Charlotte was made for this.”
Charlotte seems to effortlessly combine all the hats one needs to wear to be a great leader. She recognizes that in order to be a captain, you don’t just have to be an authority, you need to be a friend, an advocate, a listening ear, and so much more. When you’re talking to Charlotte, she is never talking down to you. This has helped her build a great relationship with the team, and especially with the leads she supports. Ask anyone, Charlotte is an incredible person to work with!
It’s Crystal Clear that We Shouldn’t Take Her for Granite!
One thing is clear in everything Charlotte does: her passion for this team is undeniable! Even when times are tough, she keeps the mood upbeat and makes sure everyone is feeling okay. When things are going well, she doesn’t use that as an opportunity to slack off. Every single day, she is working hard to make sure things are getting done. After each event, she is on top of getting the Business Binder filled out, social media posts are being worked on, and the event has been documented. During our offseason, Charlotte fills her schedule with FLL mentoring and getting everything and everyone ready for the season! She works all day, every day, to keep things as perfect as possible.
In the interest of keeping this blog to a size that WordPress can publish, we’ll be wrapping this up with one final note on Charlotte. Just know I could talk for like a billion hours on how great she is.
Something about Charlotte that I personally admire is her ability to make everyone feel recognized and appreciated. She never takes personal credit for group work and shares in the responsibility when things aren’t going great. Every chance she gets, she’s reaching out and telling us when we’re doing great. Another way she really makes us feel like she’s not talking down to us is her ability to take criticism.
When she asks how something went, she’s looking for the good and the bad. If it’s something she can change, she will; if she said or did something and someone felt it was off, she’s adjusting her behavior. All of these traits make me confident that no matter what she does, she’s going to go far. No matter where she goes in life, she’s leaving a trail of not just material accomplishments, but of people whose day got a bit better just because she was in it.
A Final Thank You
Charlotte and Ally are the two people I believe best represent what makes our team great. Every day, they are showing up and putting in 110% to make everyone else’s experience on the team as great as possible! No matter what they set out to do, it gets done, and it gets done well.
The Leadership Award honors exceptional students, and no matter how they perform at comp, they’ve won on our team. You can see their impact through everything they do; it is hard to find anything or anyone on the team that doesn’t have any influence from them on it.
If y’all are reading this (which I know you are because you are the most supportive peeps out there), THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE! THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BEING THERE! AND THANK YOU FOR SHOWING US ALL WHAT IT MEANS TO BE TRULY GREAT!
Stay Connected With Us During The Entire Season!
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