About Us | 2008-2009
It felt like a second “rookie” year when our 2008 seniors graduated and we started the year with a young team of juniors fresh from their Principles of Engineering class and excited freshmen ready step up to the big league of FRC.•• After a phenomenal first year, with great expectations and the pride of the community focused on us, we fortunately experienced an influx of new members and mentors as we continued to build on the startup high tech business model.• The finance and marketing team flourished, the software team emerged, and the Build team was buoyed with mechanical and software talents.
After the 2009 Lunacy kick-off, we rushed back to the Tech Lab to unpack the Kit of Parts and brainstorm and quickly converged on the same design.• Financed by a second year NASA grant and funding by our school district with minimal extra money to spend, we prototyped in cardboard and designed a slow but steady robot with a distinctive look that gathers balls from the floor and shoots them into the trailer of an opponent.• With our international team of mentors, we oscillated between the American High School student “brute force, seat of the pants, let’s give it a try and see if it works” design philosophy versus the professional, orderly, “design it with a CAD system before you cut anything”.• It was an education for both students and mentors.•• Our UK engineering mentor took a crash course in American and we learned the professional engineering method.•• Despite the learning curve, the conveyor belt slowly emerged and Sheldon was created.• Second to that “old school versus high school” culture clash, the most difficult part was designing a conveyor belt with a roller to scoop the balls from the ground.
Sheldon was a ball spitting, tank-drive machine that skates over the slick surface to gobble moon rocks and shoot them into the other team’s trailers.• Wafting the ball with a swish and a score, our human players scored from behind the barriers or from a sitting position on the side. We competed in the New Jersey Regional and went to Atlanta, Georgia for the Championship.• For some, this was their first long distance trip with a High School team and it was late nights, floor hockey and the awe of seeing the best teams in the nation.• We were grateful to have a 22 year old college mentor, who burned the midnight oil playing video games and floor hockey into the wee hours of the morning with the Scout team. Meanwhile, the “early to bed, early to rise” Pit crew and Drive team had breakfast at 6am with Mr. Wolfe and opened the Pits. The competition was exciting; we worked hard and played hard.
The Finance and Marketing teams continued to grow and flex their wings: balancing the books, writing the Business Plan, polishing the Chairman’s Award with out community service projects and fundraising efforts. Professionally polished with hours of practice, the team won the 2009 Entrepreneurship Award for their efforts. Recognized as a model start-up company, our team had a great year.