Growing Pains and Reigns

By Bhanaviya, Shawn, Mahesh, and Anisha

Task: Expand the Iron Reign Robotics Team

One of our biggest challenges this year was learning to adapt our robotics program to the large influx of new recruits. Last year, most of us current members on Iron Reign were the new recruits, so to see the sustainability progress from a whole other outlook this season was at first jarring. However, just like last year, we expanded our robotics program to support 3 teams - Imperial Robotics, Iron Core and Iron Golem, bringing up our program count to a total of 30 active participants.

Each of these three teams have underwent their own successes and failures through the Skystone Season. However, moving on from our program's last qualifier of the season, it's time to take a look back at our highlights. From competing at a grand total of 2 scrimmages, 2 qualifiers, and hosting one tournament, our program as a whole has progressed to a different, higher level. Moving on from here, our next step is to discuss recruitment for Iron Reign specifically. For reference, our team serves as the varsity team in our robotics program and everything you've seen in this journal thus far is specific to our team. With our regional championship being 3 weeks away, recruitment for our current 9-member team is a question we have yet to answer. As of now, our team comprises of mostly underclassmen - 7 to be exact. Based on this count, and our sub-team specific needs, we have decided to recruit 3 new members from our sister teams as we go into the next level of competition - Shawn Halimman, Mahesh Natamai and Anisha Bhattaru.

Next Steps

While we don't have any immediate plans to increase our team count further, we're confident that our 3 newer members will make a strong addition to our program as the season flies. All of us on this team were recruited from one of Iron Reign's sister teams, and being able to expand our team alongside our program will help SEM Robotics remain sustainable for years, if not decades to come.