Mark, I love this type of information that you put together, it has influenced me to do a lot of different things in the past few months. Thank you.
Team 1714’s name is a little out of date; we’re no longer sponsored by NASA nor Team 1675.
(and it would be so fun to say “We’re sponsored by UPS” 
)
Our current name should read: Quad Tech / Rockwell Automation / Siemens / Ladish Co. / Milwaukee SPE / Marquette University / American Nuclear Society RRSD / MSOE / GE Volunteers / ABB / American Acrylics USA LLC & Thomas More High School
341 no longer has any association with Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical (and we haven’t for several years).
Thanks for the list!
nice!! although, our team is now based out of DePere High school, WI and all of our sponsors have changed to
It appears that several team names were gleaned from older versions of FIRST data, and sponsorships and/or HS names have changed.
ThunderChickens are indeed usually listed as being from Utica, as that is the school system. However their physical address may be Sterling Hts.
Team 264 would have been from Shelby Twp, not Shelby (two different communities in MI).
Mark, do you want information on the missing numbers? For instance, 2331 was the original number assigned to 1025 before it was determined that 1025 was not a rookie.
A1 in '97 became 82 and 164 in '98. 82 became 330 in '99, and 164 became 207 and 294 in '99.
I believe the team right below A1 became 100.
Thanks for the inputs!
Some of what you’ve mentioned has jogged my memory about other similar circumstances, so I’ve gone back looking for those missing links too.
I’m adding in the team relationships you’ve all provided. I’ll keep updating the file linked to in the original post and add a revision number to the Notes. I’ll post an update this evening if you want to grab a new version tomorrow.
Some of you have noted that your team name, sponsor, school, etc. are incorrect. What I did was pull the name of your team as it was first incorporated (or the earliest data I could find), not what it may be today. Teams know where they are today, but may not know where they came from.
Some of you will be surprised to learn of other schools that started along with your team. That may also be why the location is different than today’s. Some Team Leaders obviously entered the information incorrectly in TIMS (a couple of teams had full mailing addresses in there :ahh: ).
I do want to hear about school changes though.
I will expand the list of original un-numbered teams because they aren’t all here. I was doing something else and started removing them if they could be associated with a later school, but I should have left them all alone and give them A1 kind of designations.
- I have a separate spreadsheet that contains rosters for every year and you can track team sponsors and school changes over the years there. Every un-numbered team and numbered team is listed.
- I have yet another spreadsheet that tracks the teams through the years, from un-numbered in 1992 to temporary numbers in 1997 and permanent ones starting in 1998.
If anyone wants to see those let me know and I’ll link them. I don’t want to overload people though. We actually have a webpage dedicated to this stuff, but all the spreadsheets are changing.
Our webmaster is designing an updated database structure to let us add more of this information to make it searchable. That’s a summer project.
Nica:
I’ll think of a way to reflect team relationships in that extra column. Maybe color coded - 1)parent, 2)child, 3)same team/new number.
FYI, No team number has ever been reassigned. Numbers have followed schools or primary sponsors.
Oh, I was actually wondering about cases in which newer teams were assigned low numbers. Like my example from my previous post: HTHLA got the team number 4 in 2006, was there another team with that number before that just retired or was it just a dead number? (I hope I’m making sense?)
I know that I’ve read of a few more of these cases of teams splitting and “child” teams getting lownumber yyy in opposed to getting rookie number xxxx. I can’t really name any at the top of my head at the current moment though.
You sure about that, Mark? I seem to remember a member of one team saying on CD that they’d gotten the number of another team (reassigned) after that team folded. I don’t think they shared the same school or the same sponsor.
These teams have all received earlier numbers than their starting year would warrant. None of these numbers had an earlier team associated with them. They are all “holes” in the team number assignments, or “dead numbers” as you call them. Back in 1997 it looks like FIRST allocated the numbers based on who they expected would play that year, but for whatever reason those teams never showed up. Since 1998 when the age of permanent team numbers began, no one else has ever competed as team number 4.
Now in 1997 permanent team #6 (Washburn High School, Hopkins, MN) used the temporary number 4, but I wasn’t counting that. That only confuses things. 
2006: 4,39,423,744,1013
2007: 424,425,1535,1711,1728
2008: 509,1025,1988
2009: 216,1729
As far as I can tell from database searches and perusing old competition lists. I started checking for that in 2005, because one of my students was first developing our database on all the teams back then. He was concerned about how to handle duplicate team numbers, but that problem has never actually materialized.
P.S. That could have been a post talking about old temporary team numbers, so the folks from 1996 and 1997 may be saying they used to have such-and-such a number. I treat those like the temporary number you hang on your chest for running the marathon.
I’m impressed by this list. I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but I don’t think I know the appropriate resources (nor would it be the best use of my time at this point in my life). This is really interesting, thanks for putting it together.
As others have mentioned, some of the team information is outdated- 1124 is sponsored by UTC Fire & Security and Avon High School (as opposed to cheetahlearning.com). Still, I’m incredibly impressed by the list, and will probably spend a great deal of time looking at it once finals have passed. I just learned that there was a team founded in 1997 in my hometown, which outdates the current team whose rookie year was in 2003. I don’t know if anyone connected to the current team had any idea that another school in our town ever had a team. This is fascinating. Thank you so much for your work on this resource.
Team 578 is now sponsored by The Gleason Works, not Eastman Kodak. I also think that our team was number 36 in our rookie year, and then 52 in '98 and '99.
93 was 107 before they went to the permanent team #'s
and 857 was 221 but switched #'s when Anthony Lapp graduated from Mich. Tech.
84, 222, and 284 were originally part of the same team, The Littles, from 7 (:ahh: ) small school districts in the northern tier of PA. I don’t remember their number, but their only competition was Toroid Terror (Check spelliing!) in NJ.
84 broke away first to become SWATT, then WATTNESS, finally settling on Chuck 84.
222 broke away next, becoming The Tigertrons.
284 was the final core of the original and is based at Elk Lake High School.
Mark for official FIRST historian!
You are amazing. Make sure this gets sent to HQ.
There used to be another Team 7 (they won CA in the early years) but don’t know if they are now another team.
tisk tisk…you don’t remember We started out all together as 118 (yes FIRST recycles numbers) then when 84 broke away the team number was 143. The final split formed 222 and 284 in 1999. All three teams remain close. The splits were mainly due logistics and getting more students from each small school district involved.
Strictly speaking, the Microsoft sponsorship exists only in that we use their facilities and we do so at the behest of just one man. Also, for what it’s worth, the team did not compete in 2001 – the season after its first at Redmond HS.
Team 143 had these the schools and played in Torrid Terror and Ladder Logic.
- Northeastern Educational IU19
- Elk Lake HS
- Lackawanna County Area Vocational Technical School
- Lackawanna Trail HS
- Tunkhannock Area HS
- Troy Area HS
- Susquehanna County AVTS
Team “7” - “The Labsters” - AT&T Bell Labs & Science High School, Newark, NJ
P.S.
I have to modify my answer a bit.
That team followed the sponsor, AT&T Bell Laboratories, around to a couple of different schools for only a couple of years ('93 & '94).
The closest team in the modern era of numbers would be Team 752.
Or as close as can be.
“118” wasn’t a recycled number in the modern era. It was from 1997 when all team numbers were temporary. Nobody kept those pre-1998 numbers year-to-year. I treat those like the temporary number you hang on your chest for running the marathon.
I’m staying away from using any of those pre-1998 numbers or we’ll never figure out who begat who. :eek:
FIRST actually logs team 143 as the team number for both 1997 and 1998. None of the temporary numbers are preserved in the FIRST Team database.
I have the 1997 list of temporary team numbers, but I don’t think I have the list used in 1996. Does anyone else?