2001 Season

Team 696's cheering section in the stands

The 2001 season marked the beginning of our team. It all started with a small group of students who had the dream of competing in one of the most prestigious robot events in existence: the FIRST Robotics Competition. Read a press release about our inaugural season.

With very few borrowed tools, no experience building a robot for this competition, and much determination, we created our first robot. It was later to be named "Clark Kent" after the character from Superman.

Each game proposed by the "Robot Masters" at FIRST is radically different. This gives us a different challenge each year. The 2001 game is called Diabolical Dynamics.

Clark Kent on the move

More important than the game or even the robot itself was the process. In a six-week time period, we went from a group of students with the vague notion of building a robot but were willing to give tremendous amounts of effort to a tightly knit robotics team capable of designing, testing, fabricating and assembling a fully functional competition robot.

Although winning isn't everything, it's nice after hard work to get some recognition. After the three day competition was over, our hard work showed. We placed 14th out of the 47 teams that attended.

Check out some photos from 2001!

Left: Clark Kent pushes a goal. Right: Clark Kent pushes a goal over a ramp.