Origins

FTC Mechanical Mushrooms started as a post-tournament dream.

January 27th, 2024. We've just finished our last tournament of the CenterStage season. Our last tournament on our old team, FTC 12010 (ChargerBots). After running through the heavy rain to a van and tragically losing a beloved paper hat along the way, our emotions were everywhere. There was the relief that the dry interior of the vehicle brought, the sadness about the end of the season, happiness about placing 3rd for the Innovate Award, and the hungry anticipation for our promised Golden Corral dinner. On the way to said restaurant and back to our school, Charlotte, who would later go on to become our team captain, brought up an idea. Why don't we start our own team?

The idea didn't just come from that, though. It grew from many factors, but most notably a conversation that happened during the late-night drive back from our previous tournament on January 20th at Thales Academy. Our beloved coach shared her thoughts on women in STEM, and how they're often mistreated or pushed to the side just because of their gender. This further motivated us to start our own team.

Back to the 27th, though- while we were driven through the rain, surrounded by stars and a night sky, we discussed it, brainstorming things like names for the team. At the time, we were as far away from becoming a real FTC team as we were from the moon.

For the rest of January, we continued to talk about the endless possibilities for our hypothetical team. The name "Mechanical Mushrooms" was introduced. Resources were gathered, votes for names were cast, and more. But nothing else really officially happens until February 8th. 

The dream was becoming more of a goal...

Now, we're at our end-of-the-season party. Dining on Gatorade, pizza and baked chips while fending off hungry high schoolers, we reflected our months spent together as a team. Following the presentation of a thank you video for our coach and custom keychains from her, most of our team left to hang out on the field outside. While waiting for our coach to return so we could talk to her about this grand idea, we did a final vote on the name, joked around, and (unsuccessfully) tried to protect our food. However, when she did return, it was time to be serious.

During that meeting, we talked to her about our motivations for starting the team, possible support our school could continue to give us, the definite financial issues we'd have, and more. All in all, it was incredibly helpful. 

After this meeting, we started on assigning possible roles and just preparing for putting this in action in general. Past February, things started to slow down again. Occasional chats about various things occurred, but we didn't make much progress. Those talks even completely stopped for a month. Since registration loomed in the distance on May 17th, Charlotte decided that we needed to meet. 

On April 4, we had our first official meeting. It wasn't very official, having been hosted during lunch and surrounded by other middle schoolers noisily doing various athletic activities, but it worked. There, we touched on where and when we'd meet, sponsorships and how to email companies for them, a lunch meeting schedule, and the people who'd be on our match team.

As for things we needed to work on, a Google account and corresponding email as well as the very website you're reading this from were all in order. Additionally, we needed to make sure everyone was committed to the team, figure out meeting logistics, etcetera.

Through rain checks and altered schedules, we continued having these weekly meetings, slowly figuring out our plans for the coming season and getting closer to registration. It wasn't without conflict though; we had a few rough spots here and there, but in the end they were all important to letting us better work together as a team.

...but even just dreaming costs money.

On April 21st, we launched our GoFundMe page. Surprisingly, we reached our goal of $2,500 in less than 24 hours, and for that we'd like to give a thank you and a shout out to our founding donors. Without them, we wouldn't've been able to get started.

At our meeting the day after, we decided to raise the goal to $3,000 to include extra costs for things like more equipment, team apparel, pit decor, and more. We'd known from the start that in order to keep the team running, we would need sponsors, but the problem with that was... well, to get sponsors for a team, you need a team. So, that's what we did next.

The money can help you get started...

May 3rd was our first meeting as a team outside of our regular lunchtime meetings at school. At Charlotte's house, we made posters and also created a coach account so that we could register the team. Registration didn't start until May 17th though, so we had some time to wait.

After May 17th came and we started registration on May 22nd, we had a small realization that it wasn't as much of a one-step process as we thought. First, we needed to register the team to FTC in general (luckily, that doesn't cost anything), and then we could register it for the season. Of course, we eventually got all of that done, and the very last piece of registration that we'd have to deal with that year (adding all of the members to the team) was finished by September.

...but you need to work to go past that.

Admittedly, following the end of the school year, progress slowed. In May, we'd tried multiple times to figure out dates to meet over the summer, but those never really worked out due to our extremely conflicting schedules full of volunteering, summer camps, trips and more. Of course, we still had to do something, so we planned for individual team members (mostly just one- thanks, Tara!) to build and code the bot.

By our first real meeting on September 7th to watch the game reveal at Charlotte's house, the bot was functional in that it could drive- but now we needed to figure out how we'd go about playing the game for the season, Into the Deep. Through use of a rough cardboard model of a sample, drawings and Legos, we tried figuring out our claw design. Soon, the 2-hour long meeting reached its end, and we came back the next day to further work with the bot, this time at Tara's house instead.

And thus, our journey officially began.