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2008 Season

"ROY" and it's MTHS twin

Competitions: Seattle FRC Regionals
Rankings: 9th at end of seeding rounds, 7th Alliance leader
Awards: Given "This Rookie Rocks!" award by team #2002

The Year in Review: This was our 'Rookie' year, or our first year. We were mentored by the Mountlake Terrace High School team 1778. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start. At the end of the first recruiting we had ONE active member and had lost our original coach! Our lone member made a recruiting Powerpoint to show during tutorial and the team picked up three more members which made the minimum four for a team one week before the build started!

Since we had so few members and very little idea what we were doing, it was decided that our machine would be of the same design as the Mountlake Terrace machine. The next several weeks were extremely chaotic. Trying to learn how to make a robot and how the whole FIRST program worked was a real challenge. Then we ran into a major snag! The Seattle competition was on the same weekend as the opening of the Musical that two of our members were in. If they missed it, the band teacher would have murdered them, but if we didn't have at least four members, we couldn't be a team. What to do? We borrowed people from MTHS, problem solved.

MTHS's team was going to the Portland Regional. A couple of our team members went along to observe to get an idea what it was all about. They came back revved up to do Seattle. We spent the next couple of week's getting ready. Even after shipping the robot, there was still plenty of work to do: making a pit area to hold the tools and stuff, pressing out 500 buttons to hand out, making a safety display and more.

The competition was amazing! Teams frantically working on their machines in the pit, machines battling it out in the arena, the crowd roaring. Wow! For a rookie team we did OK, but the main thing was how much we learned. Things like how important teamwork is, and that you should always be sure the override switch is OFF before a round!