1995-1997

For three years, Mike Mamo, an industrial arts teacher (now retired) who specialized in teaching metals, CAD and 3-D World, led the robotics team in its first three seasons, 1995-1997. In 1995, we won the Most Photogenic Award. The 1996 season saw WO take eighth place in its nationals competition. The team included Dave Huizenga, Dan Swihart, Joel Brown, Dan Rohn, Travuis Smith, Craig Vyncke, Eric Hall, Tara Larose, Kelli Hassevort, Ly Yam, Justin Telman, Cy Kim, Adam Kimple, Mike McClarty, Osceola Walters, John Seamans, John Lambers, Trieu Do, Kenny Hill, Matt Baker, Ben Kroneneyer, Keith Carlson. Prince employees were Ken Hill, Rusty Lhamon, Joe Thompson, Brian Honeck, Steve Voll, Mark Meeuwsen, Brian Dexter and Mr. Borlik, and Mr. Mike Mamo from West Ottawa High School.

1997 brought more success to the “Panther” robot, as it was called in those early days. We placed 12th at nationals. Our students were Jim Seabright, Treiu Do, Kara Main, Animbal Adames, Kenny Hill, Ly H. Yam, Daron McKinley, Ken Overway, Charlie Kittridge, Cory VanderYacht, Kelly Hassevoort, Jason Flipiak, Justin Telman, Steve Brierty, Dena Ismael, Matt Baker, Kurt Staat, Bobby Dars, Sean Bearns, Dan Rohn, David Huizenga, Brad Burke, Dan Swihart, Eric Hall, Adam Kimple, Mike McClarty, John Seamans. Members from Prince Corporation were Mark Meeuwsen, Tracy Dowker, Joe Thompson, Alan Hughes, Brad Yound, Bob Bonczyk, Brian Honeck, Jeff Telman, Rusty Lhamon, Lisa Horton, Jennifer Ritesma, and Dave Busch. Mr. Mamo continued to lead the team.

1998-2000 (1999 was our 5th Year)

The 1998 season was under the leadership of retired WO teacher Terry VanderYacht. During this year, Mr. V remembers traveling to DEKA where Dean Kamen demonstrated his new wheelchair and the Segway was still under development. Team support now transferred to Johnson Controls, as they bought out Prince. Team members included Alber Caluag, Jason Filipiak, Curt Staat, John Seamans, Cy Kim, Bobbie Dans, Adam Kimple, Julian Knoll, William Beker, Joe Taylor, Stephanie Rrbin, Phillip Corning, Dena Ismail, Darrin McKinley, Jessika Hill, Matt Baker.

The 1999 season brought us to nationals, where we finished 43rd out of 217 teams. We competed in regionals at Chicago and Detroit.

The 2000 season brought another year under Mr. VanderYacht’s direction. It was quite a year, but we have no remaining records of it. ☺

2001 - 2005 (2004 was our 10th Year)

In 2001, direction of the team fell to Norma Lamotte, a math teacher at West Ottawa. We placed 2nd in the Newton Division at Nationals, and our team was very excited to be a part of all the fun. Still sponsored by Johnson Controls, the team was well financed and well mentored! At this time, the students were Brett Dalman, Chris Siler, Dan Minnich, Sheena Corning, Christian Amos, Ben Barefield, Mike Olson, Stephen Minnich, John Angeli, Sean Tietze, Evan Sharp, Joe Filcik, Louwrens Wildschut. Mentors this year were Jonathan Pratt, Paul Amos, Georgia Holstine, Joe Thompson, Dave Gunnett, Bob Bonczyk, Jason VanEvery, Marcy VanEvery, Jan-Harm Wolters.

2002 brought us a great team and wonderful mentors and motivated students, but also a stubbornly still robot. As we tried a crab drive for the first time, we encountered one thread-stripping, gear-stripping, unmovable sad robot. However, despite this the team learned a lot. And there are plenty of funny stories to tell about our robot that NEVER moved and finally decided to take off like crazy in the parking lot of one of our competitions, where it dramatically ran into a brand-new Lexus! Team members, while an incomplete list, included Mike Olson, Ben Barefield, Kathy Nienhuis, Amanda Siler, Chris Siler, and Stephen Minnich.

2003 brought us a busy schedule as we headed to the Buckeye Regional, where we won the Johnson and Johnson Sportsmanship Award. Later, we took the Leadership in Controls award at the West Michigan Regional. Our robot was a serious tote stacker, and we had a great build season that year. We could actually stack up to 12 totes with our robot, though the ferocity of the competition that year rarely allowed us to do so!

2004 was a record-setting season for our team in many ways. We had our most intensive travel itinerary ever, going to four regionals and nationals! We went to the Buckeye again (love that venue!), where we were named the winner of the Engineering Inspiration Award. We also went to the Great Lakes Regional in Ypsilanti, visiting our neighbors across the state. Then we traveled to the Chesapeake Regional and won the Imagery award. While we were there, our bus driver took us on a personalized, whirlwind tour of the capitol, and we saw all the major sites in an evening. Who argues with a bus driver who says, “Ok, quick! Get out. You’ve got 15 minutes to see the Lincoln Memorial.” And away we went! We also got to tour Annapolis, which was a big thrill. After these successful regional events, we went on to the West Michigan Regional, where we won the Regional Champion Award (for the first time ever!) and the Regional Chairman’s Award. We went back to our school board so proud of our accomplishments! Not only was our team busy that year with robotics, but we also helped our community by planting dune grass to stop erosion on Mt. Pissgah on Lake Michigan’s shoreline and we worked to establish a county park (Hemlock Park). Then we all put together a float for the internationally famous Tulip Time Parade! What a year!

2005 saw major changes for our team! After 10 years as our sole sponsor, JCI had to stop supporting our team financially. Just when we thought all was lost and we would never compete again, a local visionary company named JR Automation Technologies LLC came to our rescue! They paid for our team’s entry fee and we were in business again. We had a new home in JR’s spare spaces, and we were working with a new engineering team, alongside all of our previous mentors, who stayed with the team despite the loss of money. We had a great time with Triple Play, and we built a robot that performed well. We attended the Buckeye, and again won the Engineering Inspiration Award. We attended the Great Lakes Regional and won the KPC and B Entrepreneurship award at the West Michigan Regional. This was mainly to recognize our team for its fighting spirit to go out and pound the pavement looking for support in November! We are proud of all our sponsors and appreciate all the opportunities that they give us.

2006 - 2010 (2009 was our 15th Year)

2006 was a great year for playing Aim High! We attended the Buckeye, the Midwest, and the West Michigan Regionals. We were named the Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award at the Buckeye and we were also a Regional Finalist! What a great drive train we had, and we had the BIGFOOT. We even had the ability to push Vaughn across the carpet. Our gigantic ball dump mechanism was just superb! After that, we went to the Midwest, where we were the Motorola Quality Award winner and a Regional Finalist. At the West Michigan Regional, we won the Entrepreneurship Award again. Our robot and team were published in the FIRST Robotics: Aim High: Behind the Design, by Vince Wilczynski. It was so very exciting to be chosen for this honor!

2007 was another great FIRST year for Rack-n-Roll! This was a fun game, and it was also very exciting right to the last second! We traveled to Purdue for the first time, attending the Boilermaker Regional, where we were honored with a Judges’ Award for having a student-run team and an all-student drive team. We had student coaches out on the field ever since about 2003, and we have maintained our coach’s admonition that the team is about the students, not the adults! Students have held the lead and the power on our drive teams. They go out and do their own strategizing, usually with no adult mentor in sight! Our team prides itself on having students take responsibility for the direction of our play on the field. During that same year, we attended the West Michigan Regional, where we won the Judges’ Award there, too!

2008 was another great year for the FIRST Robotics WOBOT team! Overdrive put us in a mood where we needed some speed! During our test phases, we would stand at the edge of the arena set up by Team 74, and we actually felt a breeze as the WOBOT went by! Wow! It was an exciting, fast-paced game. We had a great set of drive teams that year, and we sure had some serious success! We attended the Wisconsin Regional, where we won the Motorola Quality Award. At the West Michigan Regional, we won the Engineering Inspiration Award and were named a Regional Finalist. We went on to be a finalist in the Newton Division at Nationals, where we were in an alliance with the Mighty Monkey Wrenches from 2016 and 1574, MisCar, from Israel. We had a great season and another remarkable year in the FIRST Robotics Competition.

2009 brought us some Lunacy! What a game….with a reduced-friction flooring and slippery wheels, we were in for a great time. We attended the Wisconsin Regional and the West Michigan District, as our state piloted a district model. We won the Delphi “Driving Tomorrow’s Technology” award and the Entrepreneurship award as well. We attended the championship in Atlanta and had a great time!

2010 was a great year to play Breakaway! We were excited to build a robot with a kicker and we experimented with some fabulous mechanical improvements as we debuted our full-out crab drive machine. Each wheel was independently steered and driven. We could achieve very fast speed and were able to spin well. We paired this with some amazing programming from our students and were able to allow the robot to rotate and translate linearly simultaneously. This was done by the resolution of both component vectors. We had an anti-wind-up algorithm to prevent the harnesses on the wheels from wrapping themselves into a knot. We attended Traverse City District, West Michigan District, Michigan State Championship and the World Championship. We won the Innovation in Controls award in TC, and we won the coveted Engineering Inspiration Award at West Michigan, the State Championship, and the Championship! That win allows us to per-qualify for nationals, so it’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” time for the WOBOTS!

2011 - 2015 (2014 was our 20th Year)

2015 was an interesting year with Recycle Rush. The robot had to pick up and stack rubber-maid totes, along with rubber-maid trash cans.

Our robot had arms and hands, that when sitting in up right position, reminded us of rocky the bull winkle. In the tele-op mode the robot would race to the middle of the field and grab the trash cans that sat in the middle of the field. A couple of times the race would turn into a tug of war match between the two robot sides and we ended up braking some of the fingers on our hands. Robots then stack the totes as high as they can and hope that it won't fall over. During the Howell District Event we won the chairman's award.

Sorry for the inconvenience, the years of 2011- 2014 are in progress. They will be available soon.

2016 - 2019 (2019 is our 25th year)

2016 Stronghold..... .. The summer between 2015 and 2016 year we moved from the middle school building to the High school building. Getting reorganized and use to our new home took sometime.

Stronghold was an awesome experience. FIRST built up the anticipation up a notch by teaming up with Disney to create an animated game preview video, which they released in Nov. The video featured the theme of the game and little hints hidden threw out the video. Imaginations soared as we waited the two months till kick - off day in January.

Finally the day came and we found out that the robot would have to face many different obstacles. With 8 different defenses to try to con-quire, the robot was modified to accomplish all of the tasks given. Our robot was the perfect height to creep under the Low Bar. Our boulder collector arm was also a great way to level the Cheval de Frise so we could cross over with out any problems. We were able able to lift up / slip under the Portcullis fast enough another robot could get threw at the same time. It could soar over the Moat and Rock Wall with out getting stuck. Shoot the gray boulders into the Low and High goals on the tower.

Every match the game pieces would change by either opposing teams selection or during finals the audience selection. So your team had to be able to be prepared to face anything thrown they're way. The team came up with a hand signal from Human Players to let the drive team know of where a boulders location was and if they had successfully grabbed one. The team performed pretty well and had fun in the stands while wearing hand made helmets and head bands. With the costumes and fun spirit from all our team members we won the Team Spirit Award. Then while down in Florida we won the Engineering Inspiration Award which gave us our ticket into Championships at St. Louis. It was a great year all around!

2017 Steam works....This years game was a lot of fun. Using the hot fashion of steam punk, First had used it to create this year's game. Using whiffle balls and yellow plastic gears as game pieces, the teams had to use these to prepare their air ship so it would be able to take off at the end of the game. Human players where stationed inside the space ship, where they collected and placed the gears in their holders. At the end of the game the robot had to climb up a rope to turn on a light signaling ready for take off. We had a great year with traveling to 6 competitions, winning an award at 5 of them ranging from Innovation in Control, District Engineering Inspiration Award, to Event Winner. We were able to go to Championships which was the last year in was held at St. Louis. This game was great fun and we did really well throughout the year.

2018 Power Up.....gave us a game full of Power. With the video game theme for the game this year, we were supposed to collect as many points by tipping the scales in our favor and climbing up the tallest scale to conquer the boss. The team's programmers did a fantastic job by figuring out an anti-tipping formula (which came in pretty handy a few times) and about 5 different autons. Especially successful was the one that was a double cube mode: the robot raced over, placed a cube on the large scale and then went back to grab another cube and place it on the large scale again. Seconds were a crucial point to the game this year because one second of possession of the scale was a point on the score count. The battle between alliances to keep possession of the scale was a huge one. Along with the scales there was an arcade collecting station which gave bonus points. Our students were able to figure out the best tactic on how to play the game and it worked out very well. With competing in 6 competitions we were ranked in the top 20 and made it to top alliances. We won 1st place at our first competition, lost in the Quarterfinals at States, lost in the semifinals at 3 of our competitions, and won 2nd place in our Division at Championships!!! We had a fantastic year this season and couldn't be more proud of our students.

Championship was held in Detroit at the Cobo Center for the first year in Detroit. All four levels were all in one building which was nice.

2019 Destination: Deep Space. During our 25th season of FIRST, this game took us on the road, as we competed first at the Great Northern Regional in Grand Forks. We were met with a blizzard as we flew into the remote area, but we had a great competition in unfamiliar, but very friendly territory. After that, we got down to business at our districts, scoring an Imagery Award at West Michigan while we ranked 14th and made it into the quarterfinals. At Lake Superior State, we were ranked 3rd and won the Chairman's Award. The Michigan State Championship saw us ranked 9th and we were awarded the Excellence in Engineering award before heading off to the world championship, again held in Detroit!

2020 - 2024 (2024 will be our 30th year)

*****History Under Reconstruction*****