[dubious elise]

Just reading this thread makes me realize how incredibly privileged my own team is and just how much I took our workspace for granted.

As far as I know, for the first few years of Cooney Robotics' existence, all work was done in the facilities of our primary sponsor, Quest Technologies. Having never been very far into the building, I don't really know what was and was not available to the students at that time.

Sometime before I joined the team in 2003, however, the team was able to move back into our high school. We started out with a fairly large electronics classroom that had been created from a former auto garage (the back of our school once had a rather large garage for mechanic classes, this was split up into a few separate rooms) Off to one side is a large closet-like space where a drill press, 4 computers, and nearly all of our materials and "works-in-progress" bots are kept. We also have access to a "cage" in the basement of our school where we keep larger items like game pieces, extra wood and metal, and our crate.

Two years ago, our school decided to cut a number of the tech-ed programs, so the team "graciously" offered to overtake the metals shop as well. Though we had access to it during the build season, we usually had to clean up everything every night - this acquisition gave us the chance to store more of our metals in the room itself so that we wouldn't have to go elswhere in the building to get parts to build with.

We also have been graced with access to an excellent computer lab that the website and 3D animation teams use extensively.

We have been very blessed. It has taken some time for all of this to happen. Moreso, it has taken the efforts of a great deal of students, mentors, and teachers to make this awesome space a reality. Despite this, we have started to scale back the numbers of team members. Even though we have all of this space, a number of mentors have raised the point that there are only so many students that you can fit around a robot at one time.

Of course the selection process is difficult. Having to turn down your peers is never a good feeling. It is for this very reason that we leave the carrot of next year and extra rooms at regionals dangling out in the open for all to see. There is always the chance to add one more dedicated member to the FIRST family.