Yes, Team 425 receive one of these numbers because when they started they had a student on the new team that had been on another team
Mark corrected me look 2 posts down
Yup so back before '98 we were team 8 in our rookie year due to our primary sponsor BASF. Then 11 since its alphabetical by main sponsor’s name. Hence Baxter Bomb Squad being 16.
425 was a number that had never been assigned to any team before 2007.
I have a little list…
We have a searchable database of historical teams at team_lookup, but it’s on an individual team number basis.
I also have team lists for each year that I use to support some statistical analysis I while away the hours with.
We look at how many teams drop out each year, how many defunct veterans later return to the FIRST fold, that kind of thing.
Back when FIRST assigned team numbers, the Juggernauts were sponsored by 3-Dimensional Services. (3XXXXX was never our sponsor :P) All teams were sorted by sponsor names, with letters coming before numbers. Thus, we were listed first and were assigned to the number 1.
Having the #1 is a honor; living up to the number is always on our minds. It’s also funny to talk to people, often at Championships, who come up to our pit just who see who this team #1 is.
Also, being team #1 has another nice benefit: at tournaments, we are often assigned to the end of a row, making our pit easier to find. We wouldn’t have it any other way!
I thought is was 3M, which I knew wasn’t right. So I put some filler in. I’ll fix it in the original post.
Lol yea same thing happens to us, I hate explaining the original numbering system so that the real original teams get the credit they deserve.
Being pit buddies with 1 and 27 was AWESOME last year. Definitely hope to do it again. 
There is one HUGE disadvantage with keeping your team no.
When you go to CMP, you’re never in the same division with the team that started before and after you.
Example: Always wanted to be teammates with Mark and his team 358 and will never be teammates with team 360 in the same division.
FIRST should explore changing how then assign divisions to give it a new flavor sometimes. 
We are a new team this year and we requested a lower number so we would be close to our other team.
New Team 216
Org Team 288
Both from Grandville High School
Thanks, Mark.
There was only one numbered year before the numbers were locked, IIRC. I was on team 17 in 1997 and team 23 in 1998-1999 (Boston Edison was our sponsor in 98 when numbers locked, but changed to Entergy in 1999 after numbers locked. The team itself was a rookie in 1995 (National rookie all-stars that year).
The team transitioned out of FIRST after 1999, but our mentor (WFA winner) is still active in WFA judging and ran the parts table in Seattle last year.
I’m curious if FIRST still does a trial competition with a few teams before kickoff. One of my college classmates did FIRST as a prototype team. They held a mini regional before kickoff to test the rules. If so, I bet they are not numbered teams.
Unfortunately that probably wont happen, as Team 8 isn’t making it to Atlanta this year. They sort the teams into divisions by team number, right?
One team that has “broken” the system is Team Element #4, which was created when Team 22 split in 2 back in 2005 (?)
Those are both examples of the system working correctly. When a new team is determined to be non-rookie, they are given a number in the same year series as their original team.
One that didn’t work properly was when More Martians was created. I’m not sure why they got 70 instead of a number between 492 and 716.
As I recall, 494 adopted 70, which lost its main sources of support; they’ve been competing continuously since 1998.
I talked to the Martian team about this at the Lansing district, the team now know as more Martians was going to fold because of lack of student interest and other reasons. At that time the Martians team was over flowing with interest and was reaching its capacity, so instead of making a new team they colluded with team 70.
Team 20 is the lowest number original team
I am very confused. I could just not be seeing the forest through the trees, but why did they skip all of those even numbers?
They want to reserve numbers for various purposes. For example, a new team forms without rookie status because of some 2009-era conflict would receive a new 2009-era number.
(i.e. 51 is a new team, but not a rookie because they consist of 47 and 65, so they received a 1998-era number)
51 is an oddly familiar number… :rolleyes: