2010 - 11 Team Members

2010 - 11 The Game

2/21/2011 - Presentation to School Board Members

Tuesday February 21, School Board members, along with the public, came to our FRC building for the robot bagging ceremony and to see all of our Mountain Home teams going to the World Competition.  Three teams from Mountain Home are going to the world competition were present, the Silver Spartans, an FLL team, the Junior Bomb Squad, an FTC team, and the Bomb Squad, an FRC team.  All of the teams presented wonderfully and the School Board was very impressed.  We have been contacted by them a lot since then giving us compliments and cheering our teams on.

2/19/2011 - Tennessee Championship Tournament Winners!

We won the Tennessee FTC State Championship as the 3rd seed alliance captain.  Unlike the past couple of years where we were the first picked team on the alliance, being the alliance captain gives us a guaranteed invitation to the World Championship Event in St. Louis, Missouri.  We have gone to the World Championship every year since the formation of the team, excluding the first year that there was no world event.  The world competition in St. Louis, Missouri will be held April 27-30, 2011. 

We won the first 3 matches, but lost the fourth in a close match against one of our sister Arkansas teams.  We ended up winning the last two matches by a large margin, which brought us up to 3rd place.  After the matches, we were in a tough spot because if we get picked by a higher seed and win, we still might not go to St. Louis without luck in the lottery.  If we decline, then we might not win and there would be NO chance of us going to St. Louis, but we felt the field was pretty level after the first few seeds.  We were excited to get our first choice for our first pick, but strangely enough, our second pick (a much lower seeded robot) complimented our robot better than our first pick team!  We ended up winning the tournament with only two losses, one in the qualifying and one close match in the finals we lost by 3 points.

2/17/201 - Final Practice

Tonight we had our final practice before our trip to the Tennessee FTC Championship Tournament.  We stayed late, made mirror images of our autonomous routines and did some final tweaking on the robot.  Of course we waited till the last minute to do the bill of materials, but that is done now. 

We haven't decided on a driver yet.  John Taylor and Caleb are about even.  They will probably switch out at the tournament.  Blair will be running our controls.  It's been difficult learning to drive the robot.  Two weeks ago we could barely get to the rack and back to score once before the end game started.  Mr. Marts kept telling us we had to be able to do it two time before end game but we didn't think we had enough time.  We are much better now.  We are close to being able to make three trips to the rack!

Now for checking through our stuff one final time before packing for the trip tomorrow.  Chargers are in! (the team forgot them two years ago).

2/16/2011 - FIRST Robotics Competition Woodie Flowers Nomination of Our Mentor

Mr. Andy Marts, an engineer at Baxter Healthcare, is one of the founding mentors of FRC team 16.  As much as he has done for the Bomb Squad, he has been equally devoted to the Jr. Bomb Squad, many FLL teams, and he is one of the primary organizers and volunteers for the Arkansas FLL State Championship.

When the Bomb Squad was founded in 1996, Mr. Marts was right there and has devoted many years to the team.  He works hard and makes sure the Bomb Squad succeeds by being at almost every meeting, no matter how much sleep or food he has skipped along the way. 

Chances are if there is a Bomb Squad meeting at any time, you can find him there.  In addition to FRC, he has worked with FLL since the Arkansas FLL State Championship’s first year.  He has helped coach and mentors numerous teams throughout the twelve years he has been affiliated with the tournament.  He also develops and maintains very innovative scoring systems every year for the tournament, while also helping kids with simple programming and building engineering skills for their future. 

Along with FRC and FLL, he has also coached a FVC/FTC team since 2006, when the program was in its second year.  He has single-handedly taken all the teams to a world competition every year, winning the world championship in 2009.  His teams have accumulated as least two awards per regional and still counting.   In addition to his FRC and FLL mentoring, he teaches FTC students in Mountain Home Jr. High, 8th and 9th grades, math and programming concepts like binary coding, trigonometry, geometry and calculus. 

A normal day for Mr. Marts begins with his engineering job at Baxter Healthcare, then going to the planning committee meeting for lunch on Tuesdays.  After his work is done, he goes to the Jr. High for the FTC meeting all afternoon, sometimes ending as late as 11 PM, and then stays at the Bomb Squad meeting until it is over generally from around 10 PM to 1 or 2 AM. 

Everybody likes Mr. Andy; no matter how many projects we throw at him, he will seamlessly finish them all as if by magic, never with any complaints.  He makes the bumpers every year, which is painfully hard with how much effort and hard time he puts into them to make them look great.  He also makes trips to the Baxter plant to make parts for the robot that cannot be machined at the Bomb Squad building.  Usually he will bring along a student companion to show him or her how to use the machines and tools.  Also, when another mentor doesn’t want to or can’t show up for their job, Mr. Andy is right behind them ready to take their spot.  He likes to be the FRC driving coach, but he only gets to do it if the “regular” coaches are not there.  But he is happy to do it when he can! 

Mr. Andy has been my mentor since I was only five years old and has helped me personally in numerous ways like training my dog, helping me to be a better team member, and showing me how to build parts for the robots. He is also a great friend to the team and me personally.

12/5/2010 - Arkansas State FIRST Lego League Championship Tournament

On Saturday December 4, 2010, we demonstrated Get Over It! at the Arkansas FLL State Championship.  Friday night was spent setting up the game court at the tournament site and helping the FLL Tournament

staff set up for the event. 

Saturday, we used our half-built robot and practice square-bot to demonstrate the game and show the FLL students how we converted our design concepts into a working robot.  We let the students drive the robot, look inside the robot, and watch us practice.  We also let them help build our robot and entertained them with facts about robots, FIRST, and FTC while we were building.  I think we really inspired some kids and gave help to the coaches of the other FTC teams in Arkansas.