Team 1778 - MTHS Robotics

Our rookie year was probably the hardest year ever! We didn’t know what to do, we had no experience what so ever in any field, and were messing around most of the time. No one assigned anyone to project management, so it was a very hectic and fast moving environment. Students would come in, sit down, and wait for some one to tell them what to do. The funny part was that Scott Lindley, the founder of are team, used to get all hyper, and into the building, but as time passed during the day we would goof off and play around, as Scott was the center of the fabrication team he wound up coming over and barking at us; evidently, that barking actually strengthened our relationship with him.

  We would spend hours on things that only needed minutes, we would drill holes in the wrong place and always, always were looking for the easiest way out, which lead us to even a harder situation. But in the midst of all these challenges, the 10-15 core students came together and constructed a fine robot that was actually “Pretty good looking as far as design, and functionality.” according to the judges and other teams at the competition. Everybody was blown away by the fact of us being rookies, with absolutely no experience, and still managing to build a cool robot. This led us to win the All Star Rookie Award which qualified us for the Championships in Atlanta, Georgia.

With limited man power, and a limited budget, we head off to Atlanta. Of course, we didn’t go there to win a metal, we actually went there to experience the full experience of FIRST.  It was a tremendous experience! Abdur Rehman, current MTHS Robotics President said, “I felt like I was amongst those teams who were the best of the bests, who probably did something significant to get this far.” This was a great feeling. Although we didn’t win anything in Atlanta, we harnessed great ideas, bonded, and experienced a whole new world of science and technology through FIRST Robotics.