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January 26, 2002     Greenville Herald Banner

Robot pieces and parts are being assembled by the Greenville High School Robotics Team and volunteer engineers from Raytheon AIS for the 2002 competition season.  As the defending 2001 Lone Star Regional Champions, this group is committing to another winning season in the FIRST competition.

FIRST, an acronym (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) enters its eleventh year with a record number of teams competing for a spot in the national competition.  Team Greenville, the Robowranglers and their machine, Lone Star, have already earned a position on the national competition circuit by their thirteen state regional win in the spring of 2001.  This year's team will compete in the 2002 Lone Star Regional March 13-16 at the Reliant Arena in Houston and in the national competition, Zone Zeal, April 25-28 in Orlando, Florida.

Greenville High School and Raytheon have been a partner team for the past nine competition seasons.  Raytheon engineers, community volunteer engineers and students partner to create a 130 lb robot, able to complete multiple sporting task in a six week time period.  This year's entry, Lone Star, must complete the task of controlling hexagon shaped goals, scoring in those goals, picking up soccer balls to use in scoring and moving those goals to zones for points and control of the game.

Through this six weeks building period, engineers mentor students in brainstorming, prototyping, design and creation of the robot and its functions.  Students work at Raytheon to create and build the various parts needed for the robot from a kit of parts supplied by the FIRST group.  This enables students to take classroom concepts from the math and science fields and apply them to a real world situation.

Volunteering for this years team of engineers are James Collier, Will Reese, Randy Hall, John Hodapp, Casey Welch, Steve Lindo, Frankie Yau, Monty Wineinger, Brad Marcum, Steve Maxwell, Adam Davies, Jason Ramm and Ricky Torrance.

Unique to this year's team of engineers are former students now volunteering as engineers with the team.  Davies, Ramm and Welch were all members of the FIRST team in high school, have their degrees in technology and engineering, returned to Raytheon with their talents and have volunteered to be a mentor for 2002.

Greenville High School students are also busy raising money for their travel expenses, visiting area classrooms with tabletop robot demonstrations, doing volunteer work in classrooms and mentoring other students through numerous programs.  To visit with the team you can go to their website : http://www.teamgreenville.org created by GHS Senior Andy McClellen.

This year's team is coached by GHS instructors, Vanessa Pope and Terri Galloway.  High school members of the team are:  David Chesney, Ryan Marcum, Andy McClellen, Ian Massay, Megan Hunter, Taylor Morrison, Casey Collier, Graham Hall, Ryan Jenkins, Kyle Mitchell, Mark Moseley, Joel Powell, Rayna Sherman, Lydia Shook, Matt Sikes, Julie Stibbe, Cameron Thatcher, Brandon Torrance, Jason Maxwell and Beth McClellen.