This Year
Late 2010 and the 2011 Challenge

Kickoff - LOGO MOTION
Saturday, January 8th was the date of kickoff. Our team was at school from nine to three to watch the video and brainstorm ideas for the competition. The basic concept of this challenge is to place inflatable tubes of different shapes onto pegs, hopefully forming the FIRST logo. For more information, please see the official kickoff challenge video here:

Spaghetti Dinners
We meet up at the Eastern Henrico Ruritan Club for our annual spaghetti dinners. Much like the fundraiser dinners, a portion of all tickets sold go directly to our robotics team. In return, guests are served a three-hour long, bottomless spaghetti dinner. We thoroughly enjoy these meetings as a chance to catch up with friends, family, and teammates while enjoying the great spaghetti served by the gracious Ruritan Club.

Fundraiser Dinners
So far we have held fund raisers at Qdoba and Tropical Smoothie Cafe. We post flyers and notices in several classrooms and the hallways in order to encourage HSHS students to attend. A portion of all items sold within our time frame goes directly to our robotics team for any future necessary funds.

Robot Rumble
The 2010 Robot Rumble was an off-season competition hosted at Virginia State University. It featured teams from all over the state competing in the same challenge as the 2010 competition, Breakaway. Every member of our team served as a driver or human player at one point of the game. We ended up placing third after the qualifications and were sent to the quarterfinals. Winning both quarterfinal matches, we then faced two of the teams on the winning alliance in the 2010 Virginia Regional. Although we lost both of these semifinal matches, we had a great time playing.

Community Day
During Community Day, the Robotics team set up a booth outside the school to talk to members of the community about our team. We set up a VEX Robotics system in which people could drive around a robot and placed Deka, our 2010 Breakaway robot, on display for brief explanations of design and how it works. We also sold popcorn and sodas on the side to visitors, watched the Highland Springs High School Marching Battalion play, and had a great time. Even Hugo, our mascot, got into some of the fun!

Robotics Meetings
Our robotics team meets every Thursday from 4:00 to 5:30 after school and features design, marketing, and computer science groups working to meet their individual and group goals.