Team Sprocket returned from the FIRST Robotics World Championships, held the week of April 25th in St. Louis, Missouri.  Although we don’t have a trophy in hand, we should be very proud of our entire robotics team.  Compared to most teams that had many corporate sponsors, mentors, parents, decades of experience, and a travelling machine shop, we scraped by with 1 coach, 3 mentors, 6 students and 1 crate of tools. We have a very talented drive team made of Ayzaan Wahid, Asad Akbany, Brandon Sim, and Chris Lee.  These kids were adaptive and resourceful in making the most out of the robot we had.  Our support group made of Hoi Wong and David Tran was phenomenal.  They ensured the team were prepared as can be for each and every match.  The two mentors, Sarah Ferraro and Johnathan Chai from Harvey Mudd were very dedicated and skipped classes to be with us.  My husband, Howard and I supported the team any way we can from providing food to team reconnaissance and robot repair. 

 

There were 352 teams broken into 4 divisions.  Although we were a rookie team, we won six of our ten matches, finishing with a record that placed us as the second best rookie team in our championship division and 37th out of 88 teams overall.  We got to play in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis for the championships and it was an unexpected treat to have the Black Eyed Peas sing at our halftime.  The entire event will be featured on an ABC special airing on August 14^th at 7pm.