We watched the Kickoff game reveal video probably four times before anyone said a word. Then everyone started talking at once.
Six weeks. That’s how long we have to design, build, and program a robot that can actually compete. For most teams that’s tight but manageable. For us, in our very first season, it also meant learning what half the tools in front of us were even called.
We didn’t have mentors lined up yet. We didn’t have a real shop — just the corner of a middle-school classroom and whatever we could scrounge together. What we did have was a group of people who refused to let any of that stop us from trying.
So we started sketching. Then we started building. It wasn’t pretty, and it definitely wasn’t fast, but it was ours.