GHS team prepares to defend regional title in FIRST competition
April 2, 2004     Greenville Herald Banner

By Mark Moseley
Herald Banner Staff

Since Jan. 10, L-3 engineers and Greenville High School students have been in what amounts to an engineering sprint.

With only six weeks to design and build a robot sophisticated enough to pick up storage bins and fend off the opposition, the Greenville Robowranglers (Team 148) are once again headed for the finish line, also known as the FIRST competition.

On Monday, 14 volunteer engineers and 24 GHS students crated up the latest endeavor, "Lone Star" for the 2003 robotics competition season.

Team 148 will be going head-to-head with 44 other teams from across the nation, as well as Mexico and Ecuador, at regional competition this weekend in Houston as the entry from Greenville returns to defend its title in both machine and Chairman's Award divisions.

The group left Greenville on Wednesday with competition going on today and Saturday at the Reliant Arena.  FIRST Frenzy national competition will be April 15-17 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

In 2001, the team won the machine division, and in 2002 the team was named the Chairman's Award winner.  Last year, Team 148 brought home two machine division awards:  GM Industrial Design and Xerox Creativity.

Fifty tons of robotics parts were distributed to more than 800 teams for the building phase of the competition season.  Team Greenville's entry will be the 12th entry for the FIRST competition.

FIRST, an acronym "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," is in its 13th year.  Greenville High School and L-3 Communications have been a partner team for the past 11 competition seasons.

L-3 engineers, community volunteer engineers and students partner to create a 130-pound robot able to complete multiple tasks in the six weeks' time.

"Lone Star," the 2004 robot, must complete many tasks, including gathering playground-sized balls and moving mobile goals.

Volunteering all their time in this program, L-3 engineers have mentored students through the brainstorming, prototyping, design and creation.  Students work at L-3 each evening to build the robot from a kit of parts supplied by FIRST.

The students begin to see math and science concepts of the classroom take shape into a real world creation.

"This competition always creates a unique opportunity to not only represent our school, but our community and our state," Coach Vanessa Pope said.  "After 10 years of Competition, Miss (Terri) Galloway and I are very pleased with this year's team of students and how well they have risen to the challenge of the competition."

Engineers working with the project this year are Tom Cloutier, James Collier, Adam Davies, Christ Follett, John Hodapp, Steve Lindo, David Maxwell, Steve Maxwell, Mike Owens, Adam Reppond, Ricky Torrance, Ray Upp, Mike Waggoner, Casey Welch, and Monty Wineinger.

Two members of this engineering team were once GHS Robotics Team members and have now returned to L-3 as employees.

Greenville High School students have been busy in the community with not only fundraising activities, but also education in the elementary classrooms.

Students have built a scale model of an amusement park for the North Texas Children's Museum and have created a Web site:  http://www.robowranglers.com/.  This Web site was created by junior team member Matt Mahrer.

Coaches for the team are GHS teachers Pope and Galloway.  High school members are seniors; Cameron Thatcher, Mark Moseley, Ryan Jenkins, Lydia Shook, Cory Griffiths, Zack Corley, Justin Duncan and Casey Collier, and Daniel Webb, juniors; Brian Wight, Beth McClellen, Sarah Wright and Matt Mahrer, Ryan Parker, and Drew Roberts, sophomores; Jason Maxwell, Kevin Morris, Ashley Owens, Michael Risley, Phillip Stromberg, and Megan Wineinger, and freshmen; Nathan Follett, Justin Tharp, and Clayton Torrance.