2021 Preseason UpdateWe are currently underway with our 2021 preseason, where we focus on skill-building among new members. We have a record eighty members on the team this year, which is up 600% from four years ago! Many of our new members are freshmen and sophomores who have never participated in robotics before, so upperclassmen are focusing on teaching them how to drill, mill, saw, utilize CAD, and write code. Our specialists and leads have run dozens of workshops this preseason ranging from introductory mechanization, electronics, and pneumatics, to Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) Control. We've also been preparing our robot for two preseason competitions! We participated in our first pre-season competition on the weekend of October 2nd and 3rd. It was the first FRC Competition for almost everyone on our team, save for a few seniors, so it was an important learning experience for many. The Gatorbotics team will also be participating in its second competition during Halloween weekend! 2021-2022 Goals Gatorbotics is led by senior Siona Tagare, who has participated in Gatorbotics all four years of high school. She jokes that she has definitely spent most of her time at Castilleja down in the Bourn Lab, a place and a team she adores. In an interview, Siona explained that Gatorbotics was the first place to show her how fun STEM could be -- it’s what made her want to be an engineer. Her goals for the 2021-22 season include: 1. Growing and adapting as a team. This is a huge learning year for everyone, so she wants everyone to be able to grow as much as possible. She especially wants to prepare our juniors for an amazing senior year next year, where they feel prepared and confident! 2. Creating an operational robot that does well at competitions. The first week of January is dubbed our "FRC kickoff." The challenge and theme for the competition are released, so we are then able to start brainstorming ideas for mechanisms for our robot. Over the next seven to eight weeks, we plan to prototype, build, and test our robot before our regional competition! "We start the season with post-it notes and drawings and end the season with this giant metal thing in our lab, which is just really cool to me," shared Siona 3. Building community! Every day, our team provides a free meal for all of its members. Team dinners are always a highlight of our members' experience in Gatorbotics, as teammates have the opportunity to bond through conversations unrelated to Gatorbotics. This year, Siona really wants to cultivate a team culture of fun and learning, especially when it was quite difficult to bond as a team on Zoom last year. As always, our mission to inspire the next generation of women in STEM remains at the forefront of our minds! We thank you for your support during our 2021-22 season, and we are looking forward to a great year!
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