2010 Season

The 2010 season is not yet finished, but plenty has happened that defines us as a team. During the end of the 2008-2009 school year, the team held it's first set of elections for the 2010 season. Over the summer, Rohr had to step down from being our lead mentor and Fulton stepped up. Mr. Baker and Mr. Turner also relinquished their positions as mentors. By early October, our team had to have our second elections but this time we were only voting for secretary and treasurer. The team was only about 5 members until December when training began. At that point the team went up to about 10 members. In December, we had to hold our third elections for treasurer. Kickoff brought about the loss of a few members, but the gain of others. The six weeks has been tough this year due to minimal funding. Still, the robot is already running a whole 3 days before ship. We'll see how things go leading up to Seattle, but it's looking like everything is falling in line this year.

2009 Season

The 2009 season was Spanaway Lake Botworx's rookie season. The team started early preparations including elections in November of 2008. Build season began on January 3rd. The build season was a very challenging six weeks since no one on the team had any idea how to really go about building a robot. By the ship date at the end of the six week build season, the team had build a working robot. March 26th was the first day of the Microsoft Seattle Regional. This was the first time the team had ever competed. The first day was full of repairs and adjustments to pass the inspection. We did not get to do any practice matches until after everyone had to leave, so our programmer and driver, Alex stayed behind with some judges and volunteers to take the robot out on the field for the first time. The second day of competition started off really strong. Our first match was an exciting one where we won due to the opposing alliance's penalties. After the win, our team was ranked 10th of 64 teams. After that, our luck took a dramatic change. We managed to get no more wins in on the Friday of competition. Saturday came all too quickly, and we found ourselves beginning the day with our last seeding match. This match meant a lot to us because we were competing against the other team in our school district, a team we happened to have helped start. Sure enough, we finished seeding with another win. Our seeding rank was 57th of 64. We did not get selected for an alliance for the elimination matches or come home with any awards, but we did come home proud of what we accomplished and ready for a better season ahead.


About a week after we got home from the Seattle Regional, our school board invited us to present to them alongside the other team from our district. We did some repairs and adjustments to the robot to make sure it was in perfect condition for a presentation. The presentation went quite well. The school board loved the robot and appriciated our intense passion for the competition. The presentation to the school board was not our last event of the year. We began presenting our robot during the school lunches. We let other students and teachers drive it around. Sure enough, there was always a decent sized crowd when we did bring the robot out during the lunches. After we stopped presenting during the lunches, the team got invited to bring the robot to the district career and technical education night. Due to a lack of proper transportation for the robot with a possibility of it raining, the robot did not get to attend the event. Instead, there were pictures and other dsplays as well as Kate and Mr. Rohr there the whole time to represent the team. Alex was only capable of coming for a short period of time. Our team's displays were next to that of the other team in the district and due to the fact that the event was held at their event, they were able to have their robot there and running. Despite our robot's inability to attend the event, our team still got a large amount of attention.