After seven years of operation, we have become much more committed to the fundamentals of FIRST by increasing community involvement while continuing to stay an organized group. Our team continues to stress leadership, teamwork, and student involvement but we also placed increased stress on unity and outreach.

Our team structure still remains the same with the divisions; "Operations", "Engineering", "Graphics", "Marketing", and "Parents". Once again, our parents built the practice field, and once again, we fell victim to the pressures and tight deadlines every member faces participating on FIRST.

The robot fell weeks behind as indecision wrecked our progress. Poor communication among engineering forced the entire team to work overtime to make up for lost time. In true miracle fashion, the team came together in the final stretch to build, test, and finalize the robot.

This year our team involved itself in the community. Our team organized a food drive and delivered the food to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina. Overall, we brought in 302 pounds of food, which translates into 254 total meals. We also orchestrated an aluminum can drive this year in order to clean the environment and promote recycling. The entire team has been very involved in the drive, making it very successful thus far. This year, we also are doing a pet supply drive. Our team has been bringing in pet toys and supplies to two local animal shelters; the Wake County animal shelter, and the Orange County animal shelter. Not only have we donated to animal shelters, we have also donated to the Helping Hands homeless shelter. Carrabbas, an Italian restaurant, donated a meal to us for lunch one Saturday, and we took the extra food down to the Helping Hands shelter.

One of this year's highlights was the free Red Bull. For a couple of times during build, the so-called Red Bull Mobile Energy Team delivered free Red Bull drinks for every member of the team. We accepted the gifts in jittery, overly-hyper cheers. We actively hope they come back next year.

A local FIRST Lego League came to visit us during a meeting and we gave them a tour in order to allow them to get a glance into what it would be like in high school. We were able to show them our practice field, and one of our past robots, along with our Engineering division building the current 2007 robot. We also gave them a look into the Graphics and Marketing divisions. We have reached the decision to maybe start a FIRST Lego League next year.

At the team unveiling, we were proud to have Raleigh mayor Charles Meeker among us.

We laughed, we cried, and most of all, we had a good time in 2007. Here's to 2008.

As always, competition at VCU was hectic, but fun. We continued to work on our ramp lifting device until Thursday night, when we were inspected, fit inside the measuring box, and weighed in at 109.9 lbs (with a maximum of 110).

The first matches we competed in were preliminary rounds, so they have no effect on our standings. They simply get our drivers used to the game.

Starting Friday, we competed in the qualifying matches. They lasted until mid-day Saturday, and we won 4 of our 8 qualification matches. Right before lunch, they announced the final standings, and we were proud to hold 16th place, out of the 66 teams competing.

We were chosen to be on an alliance with teams 116 and 1885 and made it up to the quarter final rounds. Unfortunately, we didn't make it any farther than that, but nationals are right around the corner.