2018

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This is the page for the 2018 Year.

This year marks a drastic change on the team in that we began to focus solely on FRC both semesters (rather than doing VEX in the fall).

Leadership

This year also saw significant changes in Leadership roles. Due to lower membership, many appointed positions were removed.

• Co-Captains: Poojan Raval and Natalie Luong
• Business Coordinator: Eden Jung
• Communications Director: Nehemiah Elias
• Outreach Coordinator: Aarnav Saxena
• Build Lead: Sana Hafeez
• Programming Leads: Sumedh Garimella and McKinley Freelon
• CAD Lead: Evan Lee

Mentors

• Don Shaw
• Fred Smith
• Mary Rutland
• Michael Crawford

Pre-Season (Fall 2017)

The team spent the majority of the fall semester preparing for GRITS, as last year saw some issues regarding robot performance.

GRITS Preparation

The team met every Tuesday at the start of the semester from 5-8 PM to prototype potential new designs or modifications to last year's design. As the event approached, the team began meeting on Monday and Thursday at the same time in addition to the Tuesday meetings.

The team decided to focus more on gears rather than last year's not as successful strategy of going for fuel. As such, the fuel intake and shooter were removed in favor of a wooden intake that was able to slide left to right as well as move outward. The winch from last year was kept, although moved in position.

GRITS

The team attended GRITS at Riverside Military Academy on October 28-29, 2017. They played alongside other teams in Georgia and had a phenomenal time. In terms of rankings, the team ended up in 22nd place and sadly was not chosen for alliance selection. That being said, the team did learn a lot during the event, as a mostly inexperienced drive team gained valuable experience and rookies on the team learned about Pit Scouting.

Fall Outreach Events

Suwanee Day Parade

The team once again participated in the Suwanee Day Parade with a theme focused on STEM in general. With a custom designed banner, the team took to the parade by holding up STEM related signs and passing out candy to the children on the sides. In addition, they used a giant bubble wand to blow massive balloons as the parade float moved along. To top it off, they shot T-shirts out of Jeff and used Genesis to propel beach balls into the crowd. The team's float was awarded an Honorable Mention by the judges.

Duluth Fall Festival

The team also attended the Duluth Fall Festival for the 3rd year in a row. Rocking a similar set up as the Suwanee Day Parade, the team was able to shoot even more T-Shirts into the crowd at the Fall Festival. For many rookies, it was their first outing with a team.

Trunk Or Treat

The team did participate in Peachtree Ridge's third annual Trunk or Treat, where students from different schools go from trunk to trunk to trick or treat in a safe environment. This year, the team created a Pac-Man arcade game styled trunk. Students were able to participate in an event where they tossed a green ball into the Pac-Man head created by Claris Lee.

Competition Season

Anxious for a chance at redemption from the shortcomings of last year, Team 1261 started the year off with the rebuilding of another robot during the fall for the GRITS 2017 Competition. This provided the newcomers with an excellent “hands-on” learning experience that prepared them well for the 2018 season. Once again, the team went over to Walton High School to celebrate kickoff and learn more about the 2018 FRC game, FIRST PowerUp, an arcade-themed game based on dropping crate-sized cubes onto seesaws of various heights in a fight for ownership and points! 1261 got right to work, prototyping and designing a variety of different ideas and discussing the optimal strategy for the game for their first competition in Albany, GA. After a hard 6 weeks of work, Yog was Born!!!

In Albany, the team made it to the quarterfinals as Alliance Captain, but was not able to make it any further. Then, the team went out-of-state for a weekend competition in Asheville, North Carolina, where we got a chance to interact with NC District teams and form valuable connections. During Week 6, the team went to the Duluth competition right in our own backyard at Infinite Energy Center. At both the Asheville and Duluth competitions, we were ranked at 5th place, and at the Duluth event, we won the Industrial Design Award! This qualified us for the State Championship in Athens, GA, where we fought against the best in Georgia and did not qualify for the next level of competition. Our journey would have ended here had we not been selected off the waitlist to go to the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas! The team had a great time meeting teams from all around the world, go-karting, and cheering on our Co-Captain Natalie Luong as she won the Dean’s List Award in Houston, and we look forward to being back next year!

Sponsors

• Howard Brothers
• Motorola

Demographics

• Number of Members: 27
• Number of Female Members: 9
• Number of Male Members: 18
• Number of Mentors: 4
• Number of Freshmen: 11
• Number of Sophomores: 5
• Number of Juniors: 9
• Number of Seniors: 2

Members

• AJ Spencer
• Aarnav Saxena
• Ava Byrd
• Christina Fortson
• Claris Lee
• Cyril Joseph
• Eden Jung
• Emily Winters
• Evan Lee
• Ian Yelle
• Kunj Vaghani
• McKinley Freelon
• Mohamed Suufi
• Na'Derria White
• Natalie Luong
• Nehemiah Elias
• Omkar Joshi
• Poojan Raval
• Reanna Rafiq
• Sagar Patel
• Sana Hafeez
• Sebastian Zavala
• Shreyas Patil
• Sumedh Garimella
• Tejas Shah
• Tyler Son
• Yog Vaghani

See Also

Link to member pages, or other in-wiki pages

• Team Members for 2018