GHS Students, L-3 Engineers Preparing for 'FIRST' Event
February 13, 2003
Greenville Herald Banner

Since Jan. 4, 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, once again the Greenville Robowranglers are headed for the finish line, also known as the FIRST competition.

On Monday, 12 volunteer engineers and 20 GHS students will crate up the latest endeavor for the 2003 robotics competition season.

Going head-to-head with 36 other teams from across the nation at regional competition, the Lone Star entry from Greenville will return to defend its title as regional winner in both machine and Chairman's Award divisions.

In 2001, the team won the machine division, and in 2002 the team was named the Chairman's Award winner.  Each entry entitled the team to move on to the national championship competition at Epcot in Florida.

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 11th entry for the FIRST competition.

Recently named an inaugural team, the GHS Robotics team will be eligible to always enter not only the regional events, but also the national competition.  This honor of recognition from FIRST was given to teams sustaining membership and winning traditions since the inception of the FIRST contest.

This year's team will compete in the 2003 Lone Star Regional Meet April 3-5 at the Reliant Arena in Houston and in the national competition, Stack Attack, April 10-12, also in Houston.

FIRST, an acronym (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), is in its 12th year.  Greenville High School and L-3 Communications have been a partner team for the past 10 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 2003 robot, must complete the task of defending a king of the hill ramp and moving storage containers measuring 24-by-14-by-13.5 inches.  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.

Engineers working with the project this year are James Collier, Monty Wineinger, Steve Maxwell, Ray Upp, Mike Waggoner, Adam Davies, Casey Welch, Frankie Yau, Adam Reppond, Tom Cloutier, Mike Owens, John Hodapp, Steve Lindo, Ricky Torrance, David Maxwell and Brad Marcum.  Several 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.  Tabletop robotics programs have been presented to several business organizations and even creating a Web site:  http://www.koyote.com/users/vpope.  This Web site was created by sophomore team member Matt Mahrer.

Coaches for the team are GHS teachers Vanessa Pope and Terri Galloway.  High School members are Matt Sikes and Brandon Torrance, seniors; Cameron Thatcher, Mark Moseley, Ryan Jenkins, Joel Powell, Seth Garcia, Lydia Shook, Cory Griffiths, Rayna Sherman, Justin Duncan and Casey Collier, juniors; Beth McClellen, Sarah Wright and Matt Mahrer, sophomores; and Jason Maxwell, Megan Wineinger, Ashley Owens and Kevin Morris, freshmen.