The mechanical team had wide smiles when they finally got to set their eyes on the parts.

The parts, manufactured by our sponsor Atlas Precision Sheet Metal, were beautiful pieces of artfully crafted metal. “I almost cried, they were so awesome!” said Marketing Captain Amy. The best part of these parts wasn’t the beauty however, it was the timing. Atlas accelerated the production of our parts to make them available earlier in the Build Season. “I really appreciate that one of our sponsors Atlas was able to get us the materials earlier than we expected to help facilitate our building the robot in only six weeks.” said Head Mentor Mike.

With the parts here, and building humming along smoothly, the team is optimistic they will be able to do well at competition. “We’re determined and motivated to accomplish an awesome robot!” said Marketing Mentor Denise.

What you may not know is that this little baby is called Ankle Biter. Because it hurts when you ram it into someone’s ankles and, honestly, it’s at just the right level to do so.

The end. You may now return to your regularly scheduled procrastination.

Here, we drill instead of file. We use allen wrenches instead of ball point pens. And we build robots instead of watching cat videos when we think the boss isn’t watching.

The mechanical team consists of Colin May, Alex Olsen, Sarah Rieck, Aja Shanley, John Crozzo, and adorable Rachel Statz the-freshman-in-college.

Every day at robotics, our team works hard to design, prototype, and finish our robot by the unconquerable deadline of six weeks. We cut metal, we measure over and over, and we stay late to make sure we are on schedule.

By the end of the season, we are zombies running on caffeine and sugar, but we are accomplished zombies nontheless.

Then we drag our dead selves up to Duluth to compete against other zombies in a bloody fight to the dea- wait, no, that’s a normal competition. Here in FIRST, we fight with “co-opertition” where we work with our enemies then turn around and knock their robots to the ground!

In a safe and friendly way, of course.

Then we congradulate them for working so well on their inferior robot, and go home and hibernate. When the next year comes, we rise from our graves bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Rinse and repeat.