Our second year began with fourteen presentations and demonstrations in the community, to businesses and to elementary and middle schools. We hoped that those presentations would provide the spark for even more involvement in FIRST and outreach to others in later years. We were asked by FIRST to help them promote the program in North Carolina. We eagerly agreed, remembering the teams who had given us inspiration and encouragement our first year. Again, all members of our "family", students, parents, engineers, administrators and teachers, were involved getting the word out.

We approached our second competition with even more enthusiasm than the first year. We set our sights high again, focusing on all aspects of the competition: robotics, AutoDesk, and the Chairman's Award. We decided that we were going to have FUN! A big focus beyond the technical work was on building a united team spirit. The parents were even more involved with the team that year. They knew that our school was not equipped with a "shop" of any sort and being a magnet school, our students came from all over the county. There really was no place for us to work on building the robot. So, the parents did the incredible! They converted a tractor-trailer and built us a machine shop and workshop on the high school campus! We are very proud of the Robodog trailer! The school and community continued to support us as well. We officially became a part of the school PTSA. Also, the team was invited to demonstrate their robots when the director of NASA, Daniel Goldin, and US Representative Etheridge visited our school!

We were more organized in our robot design and build phases. We also had the help of even more students from NCSU. The university had dedicated an entire class of mechanical engineering students to work with our team as part of their course work. This along with the help of the two incredibly dedicated IBM engineers was our saving grace. Everyone’s hard work paid off in a big way! At the NASA/VCU regional, we were part of the winning alliance and we won the Daimler-Chrysler Team Spirit award! We were especially proud of this award because it was given in recognition of our team unity throughout the year. At nationals, our animation was shown during the Autodesk preview session. Later, we were approached by faculty from the North Carolina School of Science and Math about our program and how they might get started with a team of their own. The news was beginning to spread!

When we returned to Raleigh, the success of our entire team was recognized in other ways. The City of Raleigh proclaimed April 17, 2001 as "Robodog Day." The Wake County PTSA honored us as the "Best Continuing Program for Secondary Students" for the 2000-2001 school year. Even more rewarding for us was continuing to be asked to show our work to elementary and middle school students. Little did we know that our success and outreach would lead to a huge jump in involvement beyond "just" the competition!