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History from 2005-2006 Season
Late September, Susan Perrymanwas approached by Mr. Al Mort, a Lockheed contact, who stated that Lockheed wanted to start a FIRST robotics team at Osbourn. Â She said that there are ten students in her AP Calculus class that would love to do a "little" robot project. In October, after pouring over the FIRST web site, it was determined that the team needed to expand in size and commitment, so I called a meeting of parents to check for support and began the search for additional team members in my other classes.
We grew to a student team of about thirty five made up of students from my Physics classes, students who came to me with an interest in being involved, and friends of team members. The “original” team of ten became the leaders of the various construction teams.
In addition to construction, we formed teams who would be involved with spirit, public relations, web site design, documentation, and fund raising. Before Christmas break, we held several meetings with our volunteer mentors, parents, and students to try to get organized on a project we really did not understand.
Fortunately, we received excellent funding from Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, and the City of Manassas Public Schools Education Foundation. Our fund raising team acquired additional monetary support from BB&T, Scott Stringfellow, R. Jackson Ratcliffe, Inc., and Robert Faust. We had a difficult time finding a site for construction due to overcrowding in the school. Thanks to our graphics design teacher, Mr. Emanuel, we were able to take over an old dark room area for storage and utilize his room and the surrounding vocational rooms for construction after school hours.
On January 7, two adults and four students went to the Kick-off event in Richmond. This is where we began to truly understand the extent and value of the project. The veteran teams were excited about hard work and no sleep! Sunday afternoon, January 8, we held our own kickoff in the school library. Tuesday, January 10, the first day of construction, was a planning and design session. We developed a schedule which was only accurate for one week. We worked on the "we are behind" schedule for the remaining time.
Our mentors were new to the project with the exception of Matt Laszewski, our head mentor, who had some limited experience. Our parents supported us with supervision, mentoring, feeding, and mental support.
After six weeks of designing, redesigning, ordering parts, reordering parts, and lack of sleep, we shipped Osbourn's first working robot to competition. The object of the game was to shoot a seven inch ball through a target and end the round by climbing a ramp.
The competition was held at the Naval Academy in Annapolis on March 16-18. We had a very successful tournament winning outstanding website design against 64 other teams and having one of the better performing rookie robots.
(Click on a sponsor for more info.)
Thanks to all of our sponsors, without them we wouldn't be possible!
