(2007)

Our team was started in 2007 with three hopeful students: Kat Kononov, Rachael Walker, David Jordan. There were many obstacles that they had to face to get the team rolling. Primarily they had to acquire a workspace, tools and materials. Because our school is residential students could not leave campus without an adult to shop for parts. The only room available for our team to use was a multipurpose club room that was used as a storage area for many of the clubs. And the only power tools our team had available to use were a saws-all and a cordless drill. And the team and its mentor had no idea how to build a robot. Luckily however, our team however did manage to get our team considered as a “class” for our school’s Intersession week (a week in which students at our school take special week long classes in between semesters). This lead to our team becoming more publicly known throughout the school and it coincided with the first week of build season so our team had an entire week head start on the competition. That year Eyeball was created. Despite its rough beginnings, our robot earned the Highest Rookie Seed, Judges Award and was able to make it into the quarter-final rounds. Because our robot was so effective at defending that year we also were awarded the Dangerous D award by our fellow team Winnovation. By the end of the year the team had grown in membership, support and managed to make a splash at the Midwest regional coming in 16th as a rookie team.