A (Incomplete) History of FRC Teams in Farmington/Farmington Hills (Mi)

FIRST General Forum
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I would first like to say, this is a personal project of mine, and by no means completely comprehensive. If anyone has data to share, please do! I will make edits with more teams covered.

Farmington/Farmington Hills is a region in Oakland County Michigan. During FIRST’s history, this area has given birth to 5-6 FRC teams, however not all these teams are remembered. We want to give recognition to these teams and bring their history back.

Team 139/162 (1997 Toroid Terror)

The history of FRC teams in the area dates back to 1997 or Toroid Terror. This is when Team 162 (139) was formed on January 9, 1997, at 5 p.m.. The team was named TRW and Harrison High School, or for short, TRW RoboHawks. The name generally varies in these years due to the naming scheme being based around companies, and team names being a list of sponsors, so the name could be Robo-Hawks, Robo Hawk, or variations of it. The team was based out of the now defunct Harrison High School from Farmington, Michigan, and its primary sponsor was TRW Automotive, where the meetings were held. According to an archived version of Team 308 Monsters website, the team had around 57 members, 27 of whom were TRW employees, 8 being school staff, and 22 students. The team competed at two events in 1997, first they competed at the Motorola Midwest Regional at Harper College Palatine Illinois from March 6th, to March 8th as a week 1 competition. They competed against 27 other teams, including Rush, Killer Bees, Chief Delphi, HOT, Hammond, and RoboWranglers. Only one match that they played in can be confirmed, that match number is unknown, but they competed against 54 Haworth Inc & Holland High School and 74 St. Louis Community & Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School (Team CHAOS). After the competition, they won the Rookie All-Star Award, beating robots such as HOT and Rush. They also won the Judges Award alongside 24 (Crusaders 2020) and 302 (Dragons).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCDzlwgMt48 (13:08)(21:40)(22:50)

After this competition, they moved on to compete at the National Championships in Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center from April 10th through April 12th. No matches that they played in are known. There exists very little evidence that the team competed or was present, however there exists a banner image from the pit, and video of the team and the shirt design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Fkw6jReoE&t=878s (18:40)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVRKmndAD40 (Team)(1:42)(1:54)(1:56)(2:41)(3:10)(3:16)

Additionally, the team would end up winning the 1997 Rookie All-Star Award at the National level. They were one of two teams awarded this honor, the other being team 67 HOT (then numbered 47). Their “video” for an unknown award placed in the top 10, and their animation in the top 15. Despite their achievements in awards, the team would only compete in 1997. From newspaper articles from 1998, the team had planned to compete in 1998 at the Great Lakes regional from March 19 to March 21st as a week 3 competition, however there is no indication that the plan went through. Following the 1998 season, TRW moved to Walled Lake and started 308 Monsters, however some of the mentors from the RoboHawks team stayed on to help the new team. The last thing to mention is the number, the team was originally numbered 139, but during the 1997-98 downtime, new teams joined with sponsors who alphabetically came before TRW, so TRW was pushed back to 162, which it remains today, both numbers remain inactive. The number 139 would compete as Front Range Community College & Poudre School District/Fort Collins High School from Colorado in 1998. However RoboHawks would move onto other ventures such as InvenTeam, Capitol BEST Robotics and Advanced Robotics, doing quite well in them. Harrison High School would close in 2019 due to lower student populations. The building would be converted to The Hawk community center. What remains of the team are a sign noting the school as being host to the team and its award, a couple of video clips and photos, and a binder containing information relating to the teams history. The binder as of 3/19/23 has not been looked through for data. None of the physical awards given to the team are known to still exist.

Team 1481 (2004, 2006 and 2007)

Next is team 1481, or the part of the team active from 2004-2007, known as the Robo Raiders, Raiders or variations on Raider. The team was based out of North Farmington High School in Farmington Michigan and competed in 2004, 2006 and 2007. In 2004, FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar, they competed at the Great Lakes Regional in Ypsilanti from March 11th to March 13th as a week 2 competition, they unfortunately did not make it out of the qualifications, playing 7, with a record of 3-4-0. They would win the Autodesk Visualization Award - Regional. During the competition, team 240 would break the robots arm in quals 96 presumably. For this year, the team only comprised of around 8 members according to old Chief Delphi posts, all being male. There is no footage of the team or robot, but one image is known to exist of the robot proper. The robot however was prototyped in lego.
https://imgur.com/su7HqvPh (Image)
The team would skip the 2005 season electing to compete in OCCRA instead as team 17, getting finalist, and then compete in 2006, Aim High, where they competed at the Detroit Regional from March 16th to March 18th as a week 3 competition. There they would reach the quarterfinals as possibly the 2nd pick of the 7th alliance with teams 1504 and 1509, with 1509 alliance captains. They would lose 0-2-0 in the quarterfinals. The event finished with a record of 6-8-0. The next event they competed at was the Newton Division at the World Championships located at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Georgia from April 12th to April 14th. All their matches were recorded, but they did not progress past qualifiers with a record of 3-5-0 and an overall record of 9-13-0.
(The most likely reason that they got to Worlds was one of two reasons, there were few enough teams that they qualified on points, or they got wildcarded into worlds.)?
They would help organize the ruleset of OCCRA that year, and seeded second. During the season, the team would be awarded Best Sportsmanship Award by Cosmos (123) at Detroit, and Innovation Award by Ravens (1188) at Atlanta (Worlds). The next and last year was 2007, Rack n’ Roll where they again competed at the Detroit Regional week 3 from March 15th to March 17th. They would rank 12th after qualifications as the 2nd round pick of the 3rd alliance with 1718 as captain and 27 as 1st round pick. They would end up in the Semifinals 2 after a 3 round quarters, losing the first match, and winning the second, but losing the next, being eliminated. Their record would be 8-7-2. They would then play their second regional, the first time doing so, at the West Michigan Regional in Allendale from March 29th to March 31st as a week 5. There they would do worse, ranking 29th with a record of 5-4-0, not making it out of qualifications, ending with a total record of 13-11-2. Their final record across all seasons was 25-28-2. Their name was only Raiders in 2004, and RoboRaiders for all their other competitions. The team also had a website, making them the first team to have one. It can be located at http://www.nfhsrobotics.org/. While the team ended for now, we will catch up with them later.

I will say, I wont be doing the later history of 3414 and 1481 until much later due to not having enough data.

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This is before my time, so I’ll leave it to someone else to provide more context, but back in those days qualification for worlds (then called “Nationals”) was completely different. There were many years where every team who wanted to attend could, and from what I had heard seems like there were some years where all odd-number teams got auto-invites (followed by even numbers the following year). I can’t verify any of this 100%, but most likely team 1481 was simply allowed to attend Worlds without qualifying on merit.

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There was an old FRC video archive that you can find via the way back machine. You can still find some video and photos but not much. I never found out what happened to all of the videos and media uploaded there but I wish we could get that resource back. Our team had stuff uploaded there from pre 2010 and they used to film all of our team matches so odds are good your teams would be covered as well. 453 ran from 2000-2009 then went zombie for 2010-2011 then came back in 2012 as 453 still. So that old media was also from the old coach and team mentors so we don’t have any copies ourselves unless we can find it there or online randomly.

Edit: for clarity 453 is East side Michigan, specifically Macomb county but back then most Michigan teams would end up at the same events. Especially in the early years where there were not many events to go to in general.

Another edit: I found these links which is the most I’ve found about it. The YouTube channel was news to me so maybe there’s hope there

https://web.archive.org/web/20170104064003/http://firstvideoarchive.com/

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Thank you for this! Unfortunantly, 453 would not play any of the Farmington/Farmington Hills team until 2015 Southfield, when they went against the modern 1481 (Riveters)

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I have found information, that would show that the Harrison High School team would also compete at OCCRA under the number 217. I cannot find any other information on the OCCRA team, but here it is: chrome-extension://bpmcpldpdmajfigpchkicefoigmkfalc/views/app.html

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Looking into things a bit more, there is evidence that 162 competed in 1998. I had previously dismissed the information in Firstinspires, as it only showed the 1998 data. In light of the picture that showed the robot I will say that it appears 162 competed at the Great Lakes regional, which lines up with the previous intent information i found, and the National Championship. After this season, the FRC branch of Robohawks shut down with TRW moving to 308 as documented on 308’s website.

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This post implies 162 in 1998. After all this time ...

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Thanks for this! I had looked at @Chris_Hibner before, but since the account history was very long I didn’t find this. It also didn’t turn up for searches of 162, probably because of not setting correct before times.
This news article also implied 162 in 1998, but when I looked at TBA 162 wasn’t listed in the participants list for the Great Lakes Regional.

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There is a lot of missing information on TBA and the FIRST backend because a lot of team lists or match scores were never kept or carried forward. Most of the old team lists do survive, and 162 is shown as signed up for Great Lakes and the Championship on the 1998 team list. Most of the teams that appear on older (pre-2002 or so) events are there because they won awards or are still around to be able to tell FIRST they were there. There are entire teams TBA doesn’t have any information at all on like 218 or 3 or just about any other number that doesn’t come up on TBA under 200 or so.

I’ll keep an eye out for anything else 162 related, there may be untagged photos of them in the 1997 stuff because I haven’t cross-referenced the robots in the surviving videos from '97 as much as the photos, and I wouldn’t have tagged it if I didn’t have a positive ID at the time. I actually just started working on catalogging some of the surviving 90s footage earlier.

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Thanks a lot! The Motorola Midwest regional video and the last timestamp can give the identification for what the robot looks like from the 1997 year, just keep in mind that the team was 139.

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Wow - imagine my surprise when my email showed I was tagged on chiefdelphi. I think it has been at least 6 years since I last logged in.

I may have some old 139/162 pictures buried in photo albums somewhere (not many digital cameras in those days). If I find something perhaps I can post.

As far as team history goes:

139, 1997: we competed at Midwest and “Nationals” (back in those days). We won rookie all star at both (there were co-winners at nationals that year, 139 and the team that became 67). Note that there were only 3 regionals in 1997.

162, 1998: we competed at Great Lakes (first year of that event) and nationals. Great Lakes went terribly and we used the 3-day fix-it window following the event to do a large amount of redesign. Nationals went a lot better.

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The next team to form was team 2608 MiGHT. They were the only team to not form in Farmington, but instead Farmington Hills and are officially MiGHT Homeschool Robotics. The name MiGHT is an acronym for Michigan Gearing up for High Technology. However the original acronym was Michigan Gifted Homeschooling Together, with the team name being reworked to fit the new setting. The team mascot was also a mite, a play on words. The team is also the only one to not be from a high school, but a homeschool, comprising homeschool kids from Bloomfield Hills, Redford, Southfield, Canton, Livonia, Novi, Taylor, Shelby Township and Farmington Hills. The team had around 15 students ranging from ages 10-18, and split roughly half and half in gender. The team formed in 2008 for Overdrive with an $8,000 grant and from the afformentioned homeschool group. However the team formed much later than other teams, starting on December 12th, and starting work on December 28th, around four months after other teams. The team built the robot in the basement of one of the parents, and had a mishap with some furniture. They also received help from team 503 Frog Force, and team 1 Juggernauts, with both contributing material, space and advice, and Juggernauts specifically paying for a banner and t-shirt printing. The robot was named MiGHTy Mite, after the rhyming nature of the name. The robot had a mechanism to knock track balls off the racks, being made out of microphone stands. The robot was a 4-wheeled robot, with a black and white color scheme. The robot was around 25”x27”x19”, and had a weight of around 40 lbs without its ball mechanism.
https://i.imgur.com/yGfXBlT.png
During their first season, they competed first at the Kettering University week 0 competition in Flint , being the first to compete at a week 0. However no site registered them as competing, however there is images from the competition, showing them present, however it could be they registered at a separate rookie only event as indicated by some videos… They would win the Delphi “Driving Tomorrows Technology” Award. They next competed at the Great Lakes regional in Ypsilanti from March 27th to March 29th as a week 5 competition. During competition they would go 2-5-1 during qualifications, ranking 52 of 63. They would not be selected for an alliance. They did not win any awards. MiGHT would only compete for the 2008 season, and would not rejoin again after. This was mostly due to the grant money from FIRST running out, logistical problems, lack of sponsorships, and a general realization that there was just a lot of problems
with keeping the team running. The team had a website, although most of it was preserved in Flash, so not much is known about the websites contents.
Wayback Machine*
The robot still exists today in the basement of one of the members.

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Sad to say but it is all but confirmed that the awards dont exist anymore. When Harrison High closed they apparently laid a bunch of trophies out for teachers and anyone else who wanted them to take, before scrapping the rest. One of the mentors who now teaches at Farmington High didn’t remember seeing them there, and the sign was given from that same pool of awards. If the awards did exist its most likely they would have been sent with the sign, but since we dont posses the awards, they are most likely in a landfill somewhere. Some of the RoboHawk Robofest awards do exist to my knowledge though.

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Sorry, I have almost forgotten about this thread, but we do have the Judges Award 1997 from Motorola Midwest in our possession, I just didn’t see it in our awards cabinet.

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While we are back here, I never actually found much information on 3423, The Raider, who only competed in 2010. They came out of North Farmington High School, similar to the previous 1481 team.

From the YouTube channel “Markduchene”, I gathered the image of the robot currently on TBA:

OViXEg3
OViXEg3714×482 201 KB

Because they didn’t use the old 1481 number despite the same school, it can be roughly assumed that none of the former members of the North 1481 carried onto this new team.

They were the last to register from what I gather, being the last team of the 2010 season. This was also the first time that two Farmington/Farmington Hills teams would play each other, in the 2010 Ann Arbor Quals 47. 3423 would also compete at the Traverse City competition, where the currently only known footage of the robot is from.

Given a member from our team during 2010 didn’t even remember 3423, it’s pretty safe to assume the two formed independently of each other.

As I think I put above, I won’t cover any of the history of 3414 and 1481 in The Riveters era, due to most of the info being more accessible already. Thanks for following, sorry I dropped this off and didn’t get much info on 3423!

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I was recently reminded of roughly how the current 1481 was formed.

According to the 1481 “Our Team” page, a few mentors from the original 1481 team wanted to start a new team, or get back into FIRST. This ended up with them connecting to Mercy High School, and getting the old number due to their mentors.
From an email exchange I had with the team, none of those mentors are still on the team, unless someone on the team can dispute that fact.
Now, some of the initial facts are disputed from my information, mostly about a feeling that the number was stolen. These do not however dispute the fact that former North members took the team number to Mercy. Now here’s my thoughts as to how they managed to retain the number:

  1. Hackbots had just merged all FPS schools into their team, thus presumably had no desire to start another team specifically from North.
  2. Hackbots had presumably no mentors from North that would enable a claim to the number
  3. There was a stipulation from FIRST that the number should at least stay in the city
  4. Mercy happened to express interest, and were still in Farmington Hills
  5. The previous mentors had the most valid claim, and probably wanted to use the number, so they got it and were allowed to use it on the condition of not qualifying for Rookie awards.

As FIRST does not retroactively take away team number, Mercy holds the number. I can see the sentiment of it being stolen, especially if Hackbots did have interest in the number. Additionally, with just a few mentors returning from the team, any claim seems weak, especially as it moved to a completely different school, from public to private, and also 4 miles away, which may not seem like a lot, but is essentially half the length of the city from what I can tell.

If anyone has any information regarding this, please contact or reach out to me, following YPP of course if in a private message.

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I was a mentor on this team. My 12yo son was a student. I think the team being a Farmington Hills team is because the robot was shipped from our house to the competitions. The crate was orange and had black mites painted all over it. IIRC another reason for the break is that FiM didn’t want the younger kids on the team, so we split off and started doing FLL. The robot made an appearance at a local theater for the premier of Wall-e that summer.