[Kyle A]

Our team has been preparing now for the last few months. First we went to Ramp Riot, this really helped this year because a bunch of team members are new and have never been to an event before, and the ones that were left had never really worked with the robot, so it was a bunch of hands on training, with some great teams,

Next the team did machine and weld shop training. The teachers for bother classes spent every Tuesday and Thursday for 2 weeks going over safety, and how to operate all the machines, then had hands on work for the kids to do.

After that we had wiring and robot assembly training, using old robots, and assembling the teams t-shirt cannon. As that was going on some students worked on sponsor letters and thank you, we send letters out to almost every business in town, hand delivering some of them.

Also in this time we put together a FLL event for our local teams, this is a for fun event, that give the lego kids a chance to compete one last time. We also put on a FRC demo for the kids so they can see what all we do. The event is open to the public and is a great way to let the community know what all we do.

This past week has been getting our robotics room cleaned up and ready for the season. We spent 2 days going through crates, bins, tool boxes and shelves, weeding out junk and organizing everything the way this years team wanted it. Probably the cleanest the room will be all year long.

The team also meets and starts organizing the different committees for the year, even though a person is in a committee, it doesn't mean they have to do just that job, everyone has the chance to work on what they would like. Each committee has a binder to keep information for the year in, right now they went through last years things and made a folder in each with ideas from last year, this helps get ideas flowing for this season. Over brake the kids are going to be thinking of shirt ideas, buttons, handouts, safety things, and more, that way when the year starts they will have a bunch of things ready to be voted on.

Also over break a few members are going to programming training. The teams main programmer graduated leaving the team with a fresh start. The team has done a bunch more smaller things to help prep, they always keep busy and try to learn as much as they can. For our team the season is never really over.