Our story
We're a group of hardworking high school students fueled by a passion for STEM. With a
wide range of FIRST experience between us, we push our limits no matter our
current proficiency.
The team grows every year. We collaborate with students who show a love for STEM and have
inspired several of them to join outright. Every rookie gets onboarded by teammates outside
of meetings, so they can contribute from day one.
We are 100% sponsor funded. Every robot part, competition registration and
outreach program is paid for by the organizations backing us —
see who they are.
Core principles
- Gracious Professionalism in every interaction, on and off the field.
- Fail fast. Experiment, learn, and improve as quickly as possible.
- Inspire kids in and out of our community to pursue STEM.
- Connect with industry to learn what's new, then share it back.
It's been great mentoring Crash Out! these past few years. They're always enthusiastic,
curious and ready to learn. They've grown by leaps and bounds. Really impressive team.
What we're chasing
Community
Host outreaches wherever STEM access is limited, support new FTC teams, and become active advocates in our region.
Technical
Sharpen our CAD accuracy, integrate new software modules, and learn the math and physics that make mechanisms work.
Professionalism
Run every meeting on a clear agenda with a prioritized task list and a timeline we actually hold ourselves to.
Rachit
Bosch
Rachit is an engineer at Bosch and came to us through an industry
connection. He works with us on the math, physics and controls behind whatever we're
building — he's the reason we understand why a feedback control loop makes a
mechanism repeatable — and he has reviewed our design and software work year
after year.
Varun
FTC 23404 alum · University of Washington
Varun mentors us from both sides of the table: he competed in FIRST Tech
Challenge on team 23404 and now studies at the
University of Washington. He works through mechanism design and the
physics underneath it with us, and gives actionable feedback rather than answers.
Rowan
FTC 3805 alum · University of Washington
Rowan competed on FTC team 3805, is now at the
University of Washington, and is the founder of
NextFTC, a widely used command-based control library for
FIRST Tech Challenge. He helps us on both the hardware and software side and
gives us feedback on robot design.
Amber Kemmerling
Boeing
Amber, from Boeing, works with us on CAD and the
engineering concepts behind our designs — how to model a part so it can actually
be manufactured, and why a mechanism behaves the way it does once it leaves the screen.
