[Alpha Beta]

Our team was actually started because of a push by our administration. (Although they may have felt a push themselves from local engineering and manufacturing businesses.) Team Driven (1730) had a team the year before and the other two high schools (1986 & 1987) began partly in response to their success.

There was a lot of "figuring out" to do with this program. The administration wasn't ready to put in the financial backing that our state wide sports get, but they did recognize it was going to be way more resource intensive than our traditional clubs. Fortunately the Kauffman Foundation provided rookie assistance grants to get the program off the ground in the Kansas City area.

Administrators have attended competitions (on occasion flying out to meet with the team when we travel), arranged a small stipend for coaches, helped with funding for charter bus transportation, made us a part of school assemblies, arranged prominent places in the school to display our robots, banners, and trophies, allowed use of the building to run summer camps and science carnivals, let students and staff off work to attend competitions... And a couple of years ago the robotics program was placed on a bond issue that allowed us to renovate an old wrestling facility into a year round build-site.

Our relationship with administration grew as the program proved its worth to the students and the community. This year our principal will be negotiating with the district level administration for coaching stipends in line with the state sponsored sports.

We still have a fundraising burden of nearly $50,000 annually outside of the schools assistance. One of the mixed blessings of having a large and successful team.

PS. Team Titanium will be presenting at the Missouri Superintendent's Conference this summer with the opportunity to convince top level administrators to start their own teams. I think our name popped up on their radar after winning an award on the world stage at the Championship Event in St. Louis. We are very much looking forward to this golden opportunity. We've got a presentation in mind, but any suggestions on what to say are welcome.