Team History

2006 (Aim High)

During the 2006 season, our first year of participation, we experienced all the obstacles of a rookie team from a short planning period in the off season immediately after Hurricane Katrina to a lack of financial support and time management. However, our team was able to overcome all of these challenges and build a working product. Despite our insufficient knowledge of the competition, we attended the Lone Star Regional in Houston, Texas, and our team came together amidst adversity and presented a successful robot. Although it did not perform very well in competition, our fans continued cheering, and our pit remained bustling. After all our diligence, we were ultimately rewarded with the Gracious Professionalism Award.

2007 (Rack n Roll)

During the 2007 season, we took a completely different approach to the way we ran our team. Since a majority of our previous membership was composed of seniors, we had only a few returning students and mentors to carry on. First, a group of the veteran members advertised the team throughout the school. While some students hung up flyers, others personally visited classes and encouraged them to join our team. After the club acquired about fifty students and fifteen mentors, we began our search for funding. We developed a multimedia presentation highlighting FIRST's motives and our club's accomplishments and presented it to several corporations including Shell, Lockheed Martin, and Planning Systems Inc. The corporations were extremely impressed and accepted our request for financial support. We also designed a brochure to distribute among political leaders and local schools to gain their support and invite them to the Bayou Regional. Our hard work paid off when we won both the Rockwell Automation in Control Award and the Bayou Regional. We attended Nationals in Atlanta and were selected as a NASA House Team for the Stennis Space Center.

2008 (Overdrive)

We became Team Combustion, embellished with hues of electric blue and gold. Our community outreach expanded, with us mentoring a FIRST Lego League team, the Bonne Ecole Robostars, robotics demonstrations, and hosting BLAST's Jumpstart Build. Although our robot Pyro did not perform as well as our Bayou-Regional-winning Nutcracker, we did have the prestigious Judge's Award bestowed upon us in addition to learning valuable lessons for the future.

2009 (Lunacy)

Our team mantra for this year is "back to basics." This is reflected in our diligent work and organized team structure; we also returned to the workplace of our very first year. We continued our outreach activities always looking for new ways to educate our community. During competition Blue Steel did not perform as well as we had expected, however, we enjoyed ourselves. Although we did not participate in the finals most members of the team stayed and cheered for our fellow teams. This and other factors helped us win the Gracious Professionalism Award. One of our mentors, Dr. Dale Bibee was honored with the Woodie Flowers Award.

2010 (Breakaway)

This year Team Combustion truly became a year-round team, participating in a large number of demos and community activities for all age groups including recreational, professional, and non-profit organizations across the Gulf Coast. We also expanded our sponsor base considerably, having our first annual open house to showcase our accomplishments. We had an Autodesk team for the first time to make 1912 a more complete organization. We also attended two regionals, the Bayou and Lone Star Regionals. The robot Stryker, performed well at the regionals, taking first seed at the Bayou and winning the Quality Award and Engineering Excellence Award. Overall, we received seven awards at these regionals, such as the Excellence in Design Award and two Dean's List Awards at the Bayou (for full list, see Awards page). Most importantly, our team received FIRST's highest honor, the Regional Chairman's Award, allowing us to go to the FIRST Championship for the first time since 2007.

2011 (Logomotion)

In 2011, Team Combustion built on the enthusiasm generated our previous Chairman's win by expanding our role in the FIRST community and the Gulf Coast area. We tried to increase our involvement and cooperation with other FIRST teams and participated in even more community events and demos to spread FIRST's message to a wider audience. This year we integrated CAD design into our robot more than ever before, and worked hard on our animation and website. We were rewarded at the Bayou Regional with the Best Website Award and the Gracious Professionalism Award. Our soon-to-be president, Hannah Sorrell, won the Dean's List Finalist Award to recognize her extraordinary efforts. Ultimately, all of our hard offseason and build season work climaxed with the winning of our second consecutive Regional Chairman's Award at the Bayou Regional, allowing us to again attend the International FIRST Championship in the new venue of St. Louis, Missouri.