First Tech Challenge team #6389 "The Lazybotts" were a team of middle school and high school students from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The team formed in 2012 at Central Middle School in EP as #6389 "The Flaming Unicorns". During that rookie year, our team focused exclusively on understanding the basics of robot design, software development, and game strategy. We finished the season 8th at the MN State Championship.
During the summer of 2013, we were invited by High Tech Kids to demo our robot at the MN State Fair. This was a great opportunity for us to talk about FTC and robotics with kids from all over Minnesota, and make some new friends from other FTC teams.
As our team moved into our second year together, we began to develop an outreach and team sustainability plan which included visiting several elementary school classes to demonstrate robotics and share our FIRST experience. Part of that strategy included a name change. As a team we decided Lazybotts would be a catchy name to give our team, but also knew that to make it work we would have to be anything but lazy. We found a drawing of a "Lazy Robot" via a Google search that we thought would be a perfect icon for our team, so we contacted the artist, Sean Smith, who granted us permission to use his drawing on all our team materials.
Over the summer of 2014, our team lost funding from the Eden Prairie School District due to budget and space limitations at Eden Prairie High School. In order to continue as a team, we became an "independent" or "basement" team. This was a real blow to our team because we lost all our equipment, tools, robot parts, and space to work and meet in. We were determined to stay together as a team, and figure out some way to overcome this challenge. We began raising funds to purchase all new equipment and pay to register with FIRST for the 2014-2015 season. Our coach and mentor, Roy Davis, provided the team with workspace, tools, and guidance to help our team through the transition. With all of this, our team made it to Worlds, and we are very thankful to everyone who helped us along the way.
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