Blacklisted for life.
The Zebracorns have a plush Zebracorn head mounted on a piece of plywood on the wall of our lab like a hunting trophy. The story behind it is that the students would drag this awful (and smelly) plush Zebracorn to competition for a couple of years. It would sit in the stands and it had like 200 buttons pinned to it. It was lifeless and kind of sadā¦ and smelly, even after being washed.
One day, while cleaning up our lab I found it and I had had enough along with one of the other mentorsā¦ I yelled āAUSTIN! Get your knife and come here.ā And so the head of Rutherford is now mounted on the wall of our lab. It has some safety glasses on it now tooā¦ and maybe a plastic goat after this season. Good stuff.
Our safety officer a couple years ago somehow created a dictatorship after the power of being safety officer went to his head. I also became drunk with power as the drive coach and ended up being known as the Glorious Advisor in Chief to the Glorious Supreme Dictator for Life of the Imperial High Safety Council of The Botsmiths. To this day, the dynasty continues as we recently added a member to the Imperial High Safety Council: the Glorious Enforcer of Order and Justiceā¦ Basically our we accidentally created a parody government that hands out safety citations for various āunsafeā thingsā¦ Like existing on a planet that could be hit by an asteroid at any minute, or being within far too close proximity to a dangerous supervolcano such as yellowstone.
Iāve heard about this one somewhereā¦
Our team has a tradition of going to a team dinner after competitions. All the students pile into one of our minivans(I think the members have two or three) and blare Fall Out Boy with the windows down. It a way of us cheering for the rest of our teamās competitions.
We have a Spirit Tsar instead of a spirit group, and he leads anything spirit, including our mascot (and he is that also) he looks pretty good too!
We have like 4 or 5 black belts on our team.
For some reason during build last year, two members broke into squats during lunch. Spirit leader got in on it and we all ended up doing squats for two minutes.
Our driver did this randomly the first match of our regional that year, and now its more or less tradition to squat when our team is announced. Weāve even gotten MCs to do it with us. :>
That, and we name all our toolboxes. I think thatās pretty normal though.
Yes, ergo the great KitKat debate.
Every year for the end of Saturday dinner, we go out and eat as a team. Since the team was started back in 2005, we always pick someone from the team for it to be their ābirthdayā and we sing Happy Birthday and/or get the restaurant involved too.
Also, our drive team always has to have a thing of orange tic taks with them.
Our team has a huge presence in the LGBTQ community, one that has built up over several years. As many as 2/5 of our team of 30 identify as something other than heterosexual. Itās good to know that we arenāt āuniqueā on that point.
What I think we are unique in is our focus on the Imagery aspect. We have radically changed our theme each year, and we have have a large subteam of students whose primary work is to develop all aspects of the theme. This year we were hippies.
Peace, love and robots! 
I believe our team has been to the most different regionals in FRC history.
Other than the San Jose, Vegas and Hawaii regionals, we have never done any other more than once.
**sorry, just read the last part of the post title.
Iām from team 5418; the Sonic Screwdrivers, the other rookie Dr.Who themed team. Very much of our team actually does not watch Dr.Who, and our team name was originally āMischief Managedā, but our school did not approve of the name.
we dont talk about 2013
We took an entire wall in the electronics and coding room and laid corkboard for a full risk map. We have played a couple games on it now. We unfortunately have to stop before the start of build season, or we wouldnāt be working on the robot.
My team was like that for a while before New England started districts.
Since 2005, we have been to Buckeye, Boilermaker, Wisconsin, Chesapeake Bay, Las Vegas, North Carolina, and Washington DC regionals. The only regionals we had been to more than once was the BAE Systems Granite State Regional and the UTC Regional.
You guys have been able to go to way more regionals than we have, though.
We like to think ourselves unique in that you have to know how to back a trailer to transport our robot to a match (pictured here)
My personal favorite is that myself (the drive coach) and the driver juggle foam potatoes during introductions before each match, and then throw said potatoes into the crowd.
We romanticize 2013 (the year we tend to avoid is our rather cringe-worthy 2011 season)
Also, our 62 students and 12 parent/mentors all fit ourselves in a ~800 sq. ft. shop.
Similar to this, Falco Tech has made it our goal to stop at a Red Robin after every competition on Saturday night, whether it be competition season or in the off-season. Having endless rootbeer float challenges is only part of the fun. Just in the time when Iāve been on the team (3 years) I believe that weāve been there nearly a dozen times, and probably even more since the team inception in 2010.
We dont have 2013.
besides the fact our main driver/CEO fired a camera by hooking it up to 12 voltsā¦