[Daniel Morse]

I don't know the exact details regarding the early history of team 213, but I do know that we were one of the original teams in FIRST, back in the early 90's when competitions were in a gym in Manchester. It went along for a few years until the late 90's, then it stopped for a year or two, and then restarted in 1999. This is where we got the 213 number. We had two large corporate sponsors that took care of all money for us every year. Then in November of 2003, they pulled out suddenly. We had enough money to make it through 2004 season. The team was left in the lurch after this, with not much money and a dwindling student base. A few of the members (myself included) worked hard over the 2004 summer to pull the team on its feet, and thanks to the hard work of my father and a few other parents on the fund raising committee, we were able to pull together the money for the 2005 season through many lower donations. That year was still rough, because when the corporate sponsors pulled out, they took a lot of their engineers with them. Through the dedication of a few engineers, and lots of student work on design and programming, we built a competitive robot that performed well at BAE. The following year (this year), I became the first official president of the club in the past two years. I strove to build an enthusiastic student base and make sure that we had a strong group to hold up the team after the seniors left. Through the continuing efforts of my father and other parents, enough money was raised to have a team and to be able to attend 2 regionals (BAE and Boston). We had the fewest number of engineers in my 4 years with the team, so the robot was nearly entirely student designed, with the few engineers acting to assist the students (they were there for an average of 45 min. a night). We built a solid robot that was competitive at BAE and was a finalist at Boston. We have a strong, enthusiastic group of underclassmen, a website for the first time in 4 years, good history with sponsors, and an award to boot. Pretty good for a team that almost disintegrated 2 years ago. Now I am now working on a plan to get some student and engineering recruitment into place for next year, so that when I am gone, these students have a plan to be able to work from and build a large diverse team.
Wow, that was long. I guess I just feel that my team's history really exemplifies the trend for teams to rise and fall over time.