FIRST is proud to announce the 2021 FIRST Tech Challenge Volunteers of the Year, Mr. Thomas Barnette and Mr. Trey Woodlief.  This dynamic duo originally hails from the hilly Piedmont region of Greensboro, North Carolina.  They have been friends since childhood and are FIRST alumni and long-time FIRST volunteers.

For the ULTIMATE GOAL presented by Qualcomm season, when social distancing rules prevented most of the FIRST community from participating in traditional events, Trey and Thomas were instrumental in designing and developing a Cloud-based solution that allowed the FIRST Tech Challenge to have a meaningful season and provide remote competitions for its teams.  The FTC Scoring system lets teams score their matches remotely, and supports remote judging using integrated video conferencing features.

The FIRST Tech Challenge would not have been able to have a successful 2020-2021 season without the help of Thomas and Trey.  In addition to being instrumental team members for the development of the FTC Scoring software, the two volunteers also helped provide real-time remote event support and participated in monthly volunteer, team and partner support calls.