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 extremely 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, 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. Even our robot, Blue Steel, evokes the theme, its simple elegance mirroring that of the 1969 lunar launch. 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 and cheered for 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.