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About Team 451's Season

Every January, FIRST puts out a game to all the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams, and gives us 6 weeks to design, build, and test a robot to meet the game requirements, then we ship it out, and go to 2 regional competitions, where we play the game with other FRC teams. Competitions are usually Thursday-Saturday of a week, Thursday being a practice day, Friday and the first half of Saturday consist of Seeding matches, where our overall rank is determined, and that overall rank is used the second half of Saturday to select the 8 best teams, who each choose 2 other teams to be in their alliance, and then the 3 of them play the other alliances for the finals. In the 2011 Season, on January 8th, FIRST gave us the game for 2011, "Logomotion". (View the official game animation here). We then worked on a robot to do it, and shipped it out.

Build Season (January-March)

During Build season, which usually lasts from January to March/April, is when we build our robot for the FIRST game. Expectations are high, to have the team provide you with an excused absence from school and a hotel room for both competitions, you must attend 90% of the meetings. For just one competition it's 75% or higher. Meetings are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:30-8:30PM (it seems short during build season) and Saturday 9AM-3PM (Lunch provided). Bonus hours are easy to get, we often have bonus meetings to make sure the robot is ready, and Saturday can sometimes extend from 9AM to 9PM (half is bonus of course). This past season, there were quite a few that had attendance of over 100% due to the bonus meetings, and a couple that were about 140%.

Off season (April-August)

After we come back from our last competition, we go on spring break. Once that is over, we have our Open House where we recruit new members for the next season. During the off season, we do what we like, working on our community service robot, upgrading our burnout robot to be flame throwing (yes, its true!), and learning new skills. Meetings are not mandatory, and we only meet on Tuesdays from 5:30-8:30. We also have our Mayberry Car show fundraiser which is the held in Sylvania on the 1st Monday of every month, June-September.

Preseason (September-December)

The preseason is when we get ready for the build season with once a week meetings on Tuesdays from 5:30-8:30. We start Machine Shop training, and we make sure everything and everyone is ready for the build season. Also, attendance is logged in order to provide a priority for forming groups during build season (if there are 5 people in a group that has room for 6, and Person A has 50% attendance, but person B has 90% attendance, B gets to join the group). We also have our Lawnmower, Popcorn, and Pizza Fundraisers. (No, we do not sell Lawnmowers, we winterize them)