The Rookie Year, 2001-2002

In 2001, Mr. Thad Wilhelm, our team advisor, began teaching at Newport High School. After advising a FIRST Robotics team at his previous school, he decided to start one at Newport, too. Thus, the Newport Robotics Group was born.

In our first year, approximately twenty-five members joined the club to participate in public relations, animation, and building and designing the robot. We went to the first ever Pacific Northwest Regional comeptition at the University of Washington. FIRST's annual challenge was picking up balls and putting them in goals. These goals were supposed to be moved into certain scoring areas. Around 35 teams participated in the regional event and we received 5th place. We also made it to the quarter-finals and were presented with the Team Spirit Award.

Season Two, 2002-2003

The second year was even better than the first. The size of our club grew to around thirty people and we were able to build a much better robot. We entered a submission for the Chairman's Award and created an animation (unfortunately, it was disqualified on technicalities). We had a lot of fun at the competition. Although our robot was superior to last year's bot, we had a few unfortunate failures, like our robot being powered off by a falling box. Our team seeded 11th, but we received 6th place and reached the quarter-finals. Our Elimination rounds alliance included Team 360, The Revolution, which hails from nearby Tacoma, Washington.

Season Three, 2003-2004

Our team had 33 members, with many veteran members participating in the club since the birth of our club two years ago. We'd definitely learned from our mistakes in previous years and reogranized the team into stricter groups and subgroups. A leadership council to made sure that everything was running smoothly and knew what they were supposed to be doing. In addition, we started designing and programming earlier.

Our robot, "Rolling Thunder" competed at the new location for the Pacific Northwest Regional, Portland, Orgeon.   We seeded 4th and reached the semifinals.

Season Four, 2004-2005

As Mr. Wilhelm left the school, our team brought a new advisor on board, Mr. Sherman Eddy.  The team once again grew in size to approximately 45 students.  Leadership roles became more formalized, and we attempted more in-depth training exercises.  Our robot performed once again well in the Pacific NW Regional, winning the Regional Finalist award.