The 2009 season started on a saddening note. The summer before, one of our founding mentors, Edwin (Mac) Provost passed away. The team dedicated their season to Mr. Provt and named their robot “Mac” in his honor.

We were excited to attend the Greater Kansas City Regional for the first time. Our trips to Chicago in previous years were a lot of fun, but we wanted to test ourselves against some local Kansas City teams.

The 2009 game, Lunacy, revolved around shooting foam balls into trailers attached to the backs of other team’s robots, on a slippery surface. We decided to use a dumper mechanism to score 7 balls at once, and our strategy proved successful in the KC regional. We were ranked 1st throughout most of the elimination rounds. In our very last match, however, one of our opponent’s robots ran into ours and hit our kill switch. Our robot was turned off and unable to move for the rest of the game. We, unfortunately, lost the match but we still got the number 2 seed, allowing us to choose our team partners. We chose teams 1983 (KC Barstow School) and 2335 (Shawnee Mission East).

Our team won the quarterfinals and moved on to the semifinals. For the second time within the game, we were hit with bad luck as we found that our robot would only go in circles, and couldn’t score.

We lost the match and had to get another team to substitute another robot for us. We lost the rubber match too. Afterward, we discovered that the problem was a stuck button on the joystick, rather than the mechanical issue we were looking for.

Although we were disappointed that we were unable to play in the Kansas City Regional championship, we were happy about our successful season and had honored our founding teacher Mac Provost.

Being our second year doing robotics, we entered the 2008 season with more confidence than the last. The 2008 game, Override, revolved around having robots race around a track and lifting large inflated balls over an elevated structure. Our main strategies were to race around the track in autonomous and lift the balls using a claw and articulating arm. The robot was much more complex than the previous year’s, and we struggled greatly to get the arm and claw to work properly. At midnight on the last night before competition, the arm was still not completely functional. We were out of time and were forced to pack the robot for shipment.

The team had lots of fun in Chicago previously and decided to return for the Midwest Regional. Our mentor was unfortunately delayed until the last day of competition, but we received help from several other teams as we continued improving and repairing the arm and claw. Our rank continuously increased throughout the qualification rounds, and we finished with a team ranking of 15 out of 42. We were selected by the number 6 seed and got to play in the elimination rounds for the first time. We lost to a team 1114 (St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada), but we felt great about our accomplishments and looked forward to the coming year.

The Shawnee Mission Northwest Robotics team started in 2007, the first meeting being the Broadcast Kickoff at Shawnee Mission North. The Kauffman Foundation kindly provided us, along with several other Kansas City area high schools, a grant to help start our team. In our midst, we had nine students, teachers Edwin Provost and Bob Stewart, and mentor Mick Schneider. Starting we knew nothing of what FIRST was about or robotics in general, but we [insert something vaguely inspiring].

The 2007 game was called “Rack’n Roll”, and it consisted of hanging inflated round tubes on a central structure. We could also earn extra points when we or our teammates were at least 12” off of the ground. We decided with our new team and little experience, we decided to concentrate on a few functions. After much trial and error, we built our robot with a simple claw for placing tubes, a drivetrain to play defense, and a deployable ramp to allow other teams to drive on top of us to score bonus points.

The Kaufman foundation asked us to attend the Midwest Regional in Chicago, instead of the Kansas City Regional. At the regional, we found ourselves overwhelmed and in awe of the high energy of the other teams. Fortunately, a team from a few miles away, team 1710 (Olathe, KS Northwest High School), also came to the regional. They sort of adopted our team and helped us throughout the tournament. We were ranked 23rd and were sadly not selected for elimination rounds. We watched the finals, and we were sure that this is what we would want to continue to do.

SMNW Cougar Robotics was founded almost 20 years ago in 2006... write stuff here blah blah blah