Due to COVID, our team, like most FRC teams, had to shut down for two years. In previous years we’d showcased our creations in local farmer’s markets and schools. Unfortunately, we were limited to our DSST community. We did several demonstrations for middle and high school students to increase recruitment. One of our goals is to get our middle school students excited about robotics in high school. Though students may leave our middle school, we hope they join their high school FRC team. We strive to connect with other robotics teams for a better sense of community. In March of 2021, we connected with the Highlander team 4499 and talked “robots” again after a long time of isolation. To introduce parents and students to robotics, we revealed our robot, Thunderbird, for the 2022 competition. We captured the minds of many who attended the event and supported our next year’s growth. Not only did we introduce the robot to our community but also to the Northeast Denver FIRST LEGO competition this April. We were able to meet many young aspiring engineers hard at work. We showed the young students what is possible if they continue working on their engineering and STEM paths.

Last year, the most significant difficulty we had to overcome was the size of our team. After COVID, we only had four returning members and one returning mentor. Luckily, with a significant recruitment effort, we gained 12 new students and two new mentors on our team. We knew we were still small and inexperienced, so we had to work quickly to gain knowledge and any experience possible. Through the next six months, the team worked tirelessly, often 30+ hours a week outside of school, to learn the ins and outs of robotics. And through that effort, we created one of the most complex robotics the team had ever made in the last ten years. Of course, there were many struggles along the way. At our first regional competition in Arizona, we had significant electrical grounding issues, which almost disqualified us from the competition. After hours of work and testing, we were able to fix the electrical problems with only an hour to go until our first match. Our robot underperformed on the first day of the competition, and we were ranked at the bottom. We met as a team thakhkjc khkjfh rkt night and decided to change our strategy completely. Our new approach was selected as a 2nd seed for the playoffs, and we made it to the semifinals. As a team of rookies, we learned a lot. After that competition, we only had two weeks until our next regional competition. We worked every day throughout those two weeks and significantly improved our robot. At our 2nd regional, our robot competed substantially better. We made it to the semifinals again and won an award for our autonomous period coding. Our team learned valuable communication and teamwork skills. Before we were often disorganized and lacked team skills. Our failures have brought us to become a solid and resilient team. Going through the Arizona and Colorado Regionals pushed us to become a true team that functions efficiently.


Identified as a Title 1 school, our community is small, with only about 500 students. The student population is about 40% Hispanic and 31% Black. Our robotics team has beneficially grown to reflect that. We have taken steps to introduce students of color and diverse backgrounds to join. Many of our students are low-income, and 90%+ of our students receive free and reduced lunch. We ensure that there is no issue if students cannot afford the fee associated with robotics. We offer many scholarships that students can rely on. We truly make sure that money is not a deterrent to robotics. Our school helps our team, but it isn’t enough. We receive around $50,000 annually. We are fortunate enough to have great companies that work with us to achieve our goals. But, we work especially hard to obtain the rest of the money for our budget. We have several annual school events that allow anyone to come and see our robot and hopefully donate to our team. We go to many areas in the North Eastern region of Denver to raise money and spread the mission of FIRST.

Furthermore, we are fortunate to have teams that are larger and have more money that gives spare parts to us. We try not to limit the ideas that our students come up with. With a bigger budget, we can make those ideas a reality. Through all of these potential setbacks, we’ve been able to showcase our skills effortlessly and eloquently. We want to increase diversity in STEM. Diversity is key to creating a well-rounded group that thinks creatively. With your help, we can achieve our goals and provide better opportunities for our community.