chesapeake regional team stories wanted

[Greg Needel]

This weekend i have the privilege of announcing the Chesapeake regional so i thought i would offer the teams attending an opportunity to get some of their stories out there.

As announcers we only get so much information about teams (name, sponsors, rookie year, etc) but since there is so much more to FIRST i think that it would be interesting to hear some of your stories. I will do my best to work some of them into my talking at the regional.

Since the regional is all about your accomplishments i want to hear them. See you all this weekend.

Greg

[atomikitten]

alright Greg, I one very important thing to say (and many, many unimportant things I'm thinking of)
team 888 is the robotiators. I haven't met a single announcer who hasn't struggled with it. Robotics + gladiators = robotiators. Let me do this phonetically, 5 syllables: row-bot-ee-ate-ores. Having said that, I have faith that we've found our first announcer that will say our name properly!
Also, we're from Glenelg, MD. That's Glen-ell (last g is silent). Notice that the name is a palindrome; so is our team number.
other interesting tidbits:
We have only one adult on our team. He's very busy.
We are the only robot team in all of Howard County.
Often, I'm the only active female member on the team. I sometimes forget that I'm a girl.
Go robotiators!
Thanks, I can't wait to hear you there!

[StephLee]

Along the same lines as atomikitten: no one struggles with our team name (the Garrett Coalition), but the poor announcer at Pittsburgh had a terrible time with our sponsor's name: Beitzel Corporation. Bite-zuhl.
We're from Garrett County, MD. We are two rival high schools combined, the only two high schools in our rural county of 30,000 people.
Our female participation tripled in the last year.
Our drive team is entirely students. Drivers are a junior and a senior, human player and coach(me) are sophomores.
This is our second year recieving a NASA grant.
We were Regional Finalists at Pittsburgh this year, and we also won the Motorola Quality Award.
Our robot's name is Meshach. Pronounced Me-shack. The name comes from a local legend, a hunter and explorer who helped to found our county.

[MrsT]

Team 225 is the only FIRST team in south central PA

The founding teacher (Pat Byerly) who retired & moved to SC 2 years ago is attending the regional Fri & Sat and staying with the team. Students haven't seen her since June 04

5 of our 10 team members are seniors that have been on the team since they were freshmen

Our school cafetaria is one of our sponsors!

Our give-aways are vernier calipers!.....IF they arrive in time!

We got the RadioShack. ®. Innovation in Control Award at NJ Regional.


Thanks.
Lisa Tarman
Main Contact
Physics Teacher

[Sgraff_SRHS06]

Team 1111 is the Chesapeake Regional CO-HOST. (We've emphasized our role as home team through directing teams to local venues and helping them out with hotel issues and finding stuff to do after regionals.)

Our team's nickname is "The Powerhawks," though our robot is named "Pedro." (Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite, I might add.)

We are based 15 minutes outside of Annapolis in Edgewater, MD--we are also the only public school robotics team in Anne Arundel County.

Our team is 25 members strong, only 1 or 2 of which are seniors (including me) with 10 mentors (making 35 total).

Our team was founded the year that our school made national news--for not something we are too proud of (and thankfully none of those people are here anymore)

Our give-aways include hair-ribbons (Yes! Some of our members will do your hair for FREE).

This is our first year in the animation competition

We officiated a FIRST Lego League scrimmage event at a local private school (Annapolis Area Christian School).

We won the Website Excellence Award at Chesapeake regionals in 2004 and 2005, and we initiated a discussion board open to the FIRST public (for team members and members of other teams).

We have never been to the National Championships (though we want to go REALLY BAD this year or next.)

We have 5 female members. (An improvement from 2 last year.)

Our robot is the first robot in our history not named after something in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[Mindstorm]

Team 1051 is from the very small Marion County in South Carolina, where the main industry is tobacco and unemployment is 18-19%. We won the finals last year in the Palmetto Regional in Columbia, South Carolina and we got the Judges Award in Florida. Our team is made up of three public schools and one private school across Marion County, two of the schools being rivals. We meet together at Marion County Technical Education Center, our Vocational Center. FIRST Robotics is really something that we can't get anywhere else. I can't really think of anything else that may be of great interest...

I hope this helps out a bit