Our History

Team 2102 started in Fall 2006 as a group of students in Mr. Jason Berend’s homeroom who were interested in computer tech and engineering. One thing we all had in common was we liked to build things – rockets, forts, computers … anything. We learned about the FIRST Robotics Competition from Matt’s parents and formed a team with Mr. Berend and our physics teacher, Mr. George Stimson, as our advisors. The teachers went to a couple of the Team San Diego meetings at Madison High School, where they learned about some mentor opportunities for our team.

We spent afternoons in the Fall learning how to build small-scale Vex robots with two UCSD engineering students as our mentors. When other students started hearing about it, the team began to grow. Now we’re not just a group of builders but a team of students with all kinds of interests and skills.

FRC is rather expensive, but our parents helped us raise money and find some corporate sponsors. We were lucky to get $17,000 in grants from NASA, Asymtek and Qualcomm, and two engineers from the community who agreed to mentor us. The Devil Duckies of Madison High School also offered to mentor. We were on our way!

Our first year of competition was intense but a lot of fun. We took our first robot to the San Diego Regional and did a respectable job. Since then we’ve continued growing and learning, getting more and more organized, and gaining more and more support from our school and community. Now we have six corporate sponsors and eleven mentors. This season we’ll compete in two regionals – San Diego and Los Angeles – and hopefully go on to the championships in Atlanta.