Hey guys - What’s up with the lack of teams in these states? Has it always been that way? Let’s spread the message of FIRST and get some established for next year :). Thoughts?
P.S. If anyone has any suggestions as to how to demonstrate the goodness of FIRST in these states from way back here in Michigan, and other states quite far from Idaho or Utah, those are very much welcome as well.
Make a cross country roadtrip over the summer demonstrate the goodness of FIRST in EVERY state! It would be wickedly awesome if a team actually did this.
Amber H was working on trying to get a team going in Utah. See this post.
The founder of my team currently lives in Utah and is working on creating a team there. He took the principal of his new school down here to SoCal this year to try and get some school support for the team, and it looks like he was very interested.
Amber has been a little too busy lately to be hanging around here. She has been keeping her priorities straight and been working hard on finishing her education. However, I have been getting infrequent reports on her progress towards starting a FIRST team.
So far it seems she has a high school lined up and her University is going to provide major support. The new Las Vegas regional could a major help because it is only an eight hour drive instead of twelve like Phoenix. Denver is also only eight hours, but the weather can be a major factor when it comes to crossing the Rockies in winter. Passes tend to be closed during the few hours you need them. At 8000 ft+ winter tends to run well into May or sometimes June.
The last time I heard from her it sounded like they were pretty close and basically just needed students and $2K or so to get the team going. I think they were planning to finish fundraising in the Fall.
FIRST sure isn’t easy when the nearest Regional or team is over 400 miles away, but Amber knows where to turn for help. Hopefully we’ll be hearing more from her if her schedule eases up over the summer.
I’ll be attending Brigham Young University there this fall, and I’ve already started contacting Provo and Orem High School to gauge interest in starting a team. I’m heading out to UT a month early to get a job and start a team.
Anyone who wants to help, PM me! (or email)
MrToast
I plan to go to my hometown in Oklahoma and make headway on starting a team there. I am in Florida right now, but the principal of my old school, and some other parties have been informed and I will be giving a couple speeches in July about the FIRST experience. There aren’t many teams in Oklahoma, and the state has recently been suffering from a budget crisis and has cut many school programs and let go teachers… It’ll be a struggle, but and uphill one. More information on my speeches will come later. anyone have any pre-ready speaches, powerpoint, or anything else they could send me to help me make mine, I’d appreciate it. Wish me luck!
Team 476 from Ponca City, OK is the team that mentored my team our first year. If your hometown is anywhere close or not I think they could help you a lot. Tonya Scott is great at this kind of stuff. Our main mentor corresponds with her by phone and has a full notepad of stuff from our first year. I’ve yet to find an interested teacher where I am trying but I’ll keep on.
BYU is also close to Payson High, Spanish Fork High, Springville High, Mountain View High, Timpanogas High, American Fork High and Lehi. You have the Alpine school district in the north end of the valley and Nebo School District in the south end.
I’m about eighty miles southwest of BYU through the Spanish Fork Canyon at CEU in the Carbon County school district. If we don’t get things going at Carbon high, we’ll head down to Emery county just south of us.
So far there is interest and a good source for a grant that will give us anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. I will be getting a club charter through the Inter-club council at the college that will give us the right to use the state fleet (vans etc.) for transportation.
If we are unable to get a team started we will at least get a group together to go and volunteer at the regionals. I have already cleared it with the officials in charge for the students at the college to get service learning credit for it.
So yeah, things are progressing out here…
This just came to mind. What if teams were to write letters to certain districts describing all the goodness of FIRST, maybe even including video presentations from the season?
Although a lot of teams were founded by people who had been on a robotics team before, many other teams were started by schools that had even the slightest interest in the idea of a program inspiring young and old alike and recognizing science and technology. If we showed this to them, the districts might just take the initiative on their own to start teams.
I think it’s worth a try :o
This could be an excellent tool. I think there are a lot of schools and groups that would be interested if they just had a clear picture of what FIRST was and what it was really all about.
My experience has been that people out here simply don’t know that FIRST exists. Once they get a look at it, they get pretty excited about it.
(Oh …BTW I meant to say in my last post that I was southeast of BYU, not southwest.)
Who’s all willing to help in the letter-writing/video-sending efforts? Once I have enough response, I’ll try to get a list of the districts in Idaho and Utah and post them so that an individual/team/group of teams may have the opportunity to select one and focus its efforts on that district :).
If you guys need any help at all, i could lend a hand…
i used to live in Utah (Roy/Ogden area) and have some information that could be useful…
I really think they would be interested…they only don’t participate because FIRST lacks marketing!!! I, for one, had never known such a thing existed until i moved out of there…It’s a bit sad, really, because FIRST has already reached other countries and there are some U.S. states that still are unaware of what FIRST is!!
It’s official, there is now a Utah FIRST Team. The original founders of Team 1110 have now founded Team 1505 (Roy High School) in Roy, Utah. Team 1110 will also hopefully be mentoring them long-distance.
Congrats 1505!
PS: There are still no teams in Idaho, lets get moving people! 
There will be. Look for 10 new teams from Idaho to be registered before December 1.
-dave
Wow! Does that mean we can count on there being green jello at the regional parties now?!? :eek (I shutter at the though of green jello salad)
I am so glad to hear about Idaho getting some teams, I got family out there and depending on where the teams are I might just need to pay a visit to some family memebers, and who knows maybe drop in at a few high schools to see whats up! 
Hi! I’m Pattie. My son Tyler has founded team 1110 in California and 1505 in Utah - Josh mentioned him in earlier posts. Actually I have been seriously involved myself. We tried starting a FIRST team last year but it just didn’t happen - so this spring we dragged the welding instructor to LA with us to see team 1110 compete in their second year. He was absolutely sold on it!
ANYHOW - wanted to jump in here and say ‘HI’ 
If there are any teams start up in the Utah or Idaho area, we’d be very happy to mentor as we’re close enough and have experience starting up new teams.
Team 1110 will be mentoring us to get us back up to speed on details because we took a year off - but I think we’ve got solid enough basics to help someone in the area. Josh told us about this website - see he’s already helping us out! Thanks Josh!
You all take care and I’ll pop in again to say hi.
Pattie
That’s awesome to hear!! Kudos to you, and your son.
And welcome to the forums! 
I am on one of the two teams that will be competing this year from Idaho. Our team is from Pocatello and the other is from Idaho Falls. Our team is planing on traveling to Portland. I’m not sure where the other team is planing on going. Next year there should be two teams from Pocatello. Currently our team is made up by kids from two of our high schools and next year they both will have separate teams.
Hi ENordseth - I sent you a message with my phone and e-mail. We’d be very happy to help you guys out - you’re close enough that a few of us could drive up a few weekends if you’d like. We have experience starting up two teams and probably have some information that would be useful to share with you to avoid some of the holes we fell into. Even if we might not be going to the same regional, we’d be very happy to help you out in any way that we can. Even though our team is a rookie team, we have a few veterans with a little experience.
Do you have funding other than NASA yet?
Did you by chance see the FIRST Robotics documentary on the Science Channel? I taped it to help me talk to potential sponsors - let me know if you need a copy. The story of Team #1396 was SO IMPRESSIVE!!! I have new heroes!
Pattie