The summer of 2017 will feature some very busy Killer Bees!
Buzz 22 has been to elementary/middle school visits and NDP’s Freshman Launch to recruit new students for the 2017-18 year. We are excited as Notre Dame Prep is constructing a new wing to include new classrooms and a robotics lab. This will allow even more students to bee Killer Bees! Our application process will formally begin in mid-August.
The team will bee at several off-season competitions, playing the 2017 FIRST game, “Steamworks”. We are playing several tournaments including the MARC (Monroe Area Robotics Competition) on June 23-24, the (IRI) Indianapolis Robotics Invitational on July 13-15, Kettering Kickoff on September 16 and we are co-hosting the Bloomfield All Girls Tournament on November 11, 2017. We had a great FIRST season and are looking forward to more fuel shooting, gear hanging and robot climbs over the summer.
In addition to our off-season competitions, our outreach program will return to some of our favorite places – the Baldwin Center in Pontiac and the Maker Faire at the Henry Ford museum. We are adding a new project to build collaboration with other Catholic high school teams, working at the Forgotten Harvest farm in Fenton.
Over the summer, the Killer Bees will sharpen and learn new skills by building VEX robots to play the VEX EDR game, “In the Zone”. We will have many teams showcasing creative solutions to the engineering challenge and are looking forward to the 7th annual Killer Bees VEX Tournament in December.
And – last but not least, the students and mentors are fueled up and working to iterate and update the most interesting subsystem of the the 2017 robot. Stay tuned for details!
We have an official team motto, “Teamwork keeps the hive alive” and an unofficial motto, “The Hive Never Sleeps”. The summer of 2017 will be a great example of both.