Over the last six months, many middle schools have been hard at work writing essays, brainstorming solutions, and constructing a model to demonstrate their concepts. At Westridge Middle School, there is a long history of high level Future City teams advancing to the National Level in Washington D.C. When I was in middle school, my teams and I spent hundreds of hours working to win the region and advance to nationals. In sixth grade, my team consisted of only three people. The presentation part of the competition calls for three presenters, so not only were we the only people contributing to the design and conceptual process, but we also took on the responsibility of the presentation. We were disappointed and prepared after a sad loss, coming in second place by a fraction of a point, on a scale greatly exceeding one hundred. The next year, we recruited a larger team and began earlier, only to fall again to the same team by another fraction of a point. Our third and final year, eighth grade,  we were incredibly prepared and had executed perfection in all of the many categories making up the contest. Our essays and concepts were flawless, and our design and model was beautiful. We made the trip to San Marcos and preformed exceptionally well, nailing all of the questions and scoring much higher than the second place team. After the conclusion of that event, there were bigger challenges up ahead. Only three weeks from then, we had to take a flight to D.C., and face significantly higher level competition. We studied the sponsors, regional coordinators, and even the judges backgrounds to be well instructed on how to satisfy the people asking us questions. Our preliminary national presentation was perfect, and we were very excited to see how we stood up against the 32 other regional winners from around the country. They announced the five finalists in performance order, and by those chances, we had made the finals, and wound up first. They rushed us backstage to the greenroom where the onstage events were prepared and told us to test everything one last time before we were on in front over over a thousand people, and on TV. Everything was in check, so we dragged our eighth grade nervous bodies on stage, to present our solution to the problem of feeding a city of the future. The first realization was of the delay caused by the mics. Everything we said relayed back a split second later, but our team handled it, and only listened to the first voice. The questions they asked were much easier to answer than the preliminary rounds, but the stage freight made ti harder to concentrate. We traded off answers and split the talking like we’d practiced, then walked off stage, with a melange of emotions. After we’d revisited the greenroom, they took us to the model storage room to be photographed again, and to stay out of the way of the other finalist teams. Once we’d completed our backstage duties and collected the items for finalists, we sat back in the audience for awards, awaiting who knows what. Future city has many sponsors who all have their own special category in which they walk around to individually assess everyone’s specific solution to their asset of the program. This is where we hoped to sweep, having studied the individual peoples roles in their companies. The sponsors presented 35 awards, over the course of about two hours. We won four awards, including best model in the nation. After the wait between awards and speeches came the placement. The environment always changes when placements are presented, because no one knows what to expect when all the teams are so competitive. We sat quietly as the national coordinator introduced the panel of distinguished judges. After their introductions, she proceeded to look down at her paper, and name the fifth place team… After about half a syllable was spoken, we knew we were safe from fifth, having all that internal stress. On to fourth, where our name wasn’t called, again. Now, top three.. Not us yet again. So it came down to two teams, both with obvious tight proximity in scoring, and sweaty, nervous faces. They brought us both on stage, with who knows what intention, and announced the first place team. It’s hard to be instantly excited when you lose to the direct opponent, until you realize who you’re beating, which didn’t take long. We were ecstatic. We had just won $7,500 after a free trip to D.C. Which brings us to 2017, two years later. My brother and his friends, including siblings of Dillon Samra, a member of the middle school dream team, formed a team with all the right mindsets and abilities. Dillon and I coached thes

e teams in all aspects of the contest, preparing them for hundreds of questions and how to make everything you say sound both true, and rehearsed. Just last weekend we made the journey Dallas to compete in the North Texas region, against a team who’s skills were good enough to grant them two consecutive trips to nationals. One of the girls in the group actually recognized me from nationals in 2015. They were our top competition, and after listening to many of the other groups presentations, probably our only competition. The team blew past prelims, and scored the first presenting spot at the regional finals. The same stressful sequence of events happened, and they won first. The team will be advancing to nationals in three weeks, and I hope to attend as well, to help in the coaching and preparation of the team for a D.C. appearance. I’m very proud of our team’s effort and execution, and I’m very excited to see them perform on stage. Best wishes to Sociecity 2017 in Washington~