Tri-County FRC relaunch

In 2026, two other student leaders and I started rebuilding our school’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team for the 2027 season. The game is BIOCORE. We started with no robot and no budget.

The problem

Tri-County had an FRC team years ago that went dormant in 2019. We aren’t picking up where it left off. We’re registering as a brand-new rookie team, so its history isn’t ours to claim. Everything on this page is what we’ve built since starting over.

FRC is a lot bigger than VEX, which I’ve done since 2021. The robots are full size, the parts are real metal, and registering alone costs real money. So the first problem wasn’t the robot. It was:

• Money: no budget, and no sponsors yet.
• People: new students who have never touched an FRC part.
• Credibility: a company deciding whether to fund us needs to see we’re real.

The solution

• Cold-email local companies to sponsor a rookie team.
• Build a team website so those companies can see who we are.
• Build a warm-up robot so the team learns FRC parts and how to work together before the real season.
• Set team rules early, so decisions get made on evidence instead of on who’s loudest.

How it works

Sponsorship

I cold-emailed local companies, explained who we are, and asked them to sponsor a rookie team. Writing an email a stranger will actually read is its own skill.

Roughly how many companies you emailed and how many replied (no dollar amounts)

The team website

I built the team’s website by hand in plain HTML and CSS, no framework, so any student can keep it running after we graduate. Its main job is to show sponsors who we are.

How I built the FRC team website

The LeBron bot

Before the real season we needed something to build. We built the LeBron bot: a basketball shooter on a tank chassis. It’s a goofy name for a practice run at an FRC-style drivetrain, wiring and programming.

How it shoots (flywheel? catapult?), how far, what you programmed it in, and what broke first

Two team rules

We set two rules early:

• Ideas go on the board with no names. Nobody’s idea wins because it’s theirs, and nobody’s gets ignored because they’re new. We judge the sketch, not the person.
• If it can be tested in under 10 minutes, we test it. We don’t debate something we could just try. Build the quick version, run it, and let the result settle it.

Photo to add: the whiteboard from a design meeting

Why FRC fits a vocational school

At a lot of schools, FRC is the only place students touch a mill or crimp a wire. At Tri-County, students already learn those skills in their shop programs. FRC gives them a reason to use all of it on one machine: design, machining, wiring and programming, done by students training to do this for a living.

Which shops your teammates come from, and the machines the team can use

Photo to add: the team in the shop, with first names left to right

Testing

The 10-minute rule is how we test. If two people disagree about a mechanism idea and a quick version can be built and tried in under 10 minutes, we build it and try it.

One real example: something the team tested instead of debating, and what the result showed

Results

So far: a rookie team forming for the 2027 BIOCORE season, the LeBron bot as our first build, sponsor outreach under way, and a hand-built team website.

Sponsors signed on (names only if they agree), team size now, registration status

What I learned

Two or three real lessons from starting a team from nothing, for example what made a sponsor email work

My role

I’m one of three student leaders who started the relaunch. My parts so far: cold-emailing local companies for sponsorship and building the team website. Your part in the LeBron bot build and in setting the team rules

First names of the other two leaders and what each of them leads

What’s next

FRC kickoff for BIOCORE is in January 2027. Until then the job stays the same: get sponsors to commit, get new students comfortable in the shop, and make sure the team can run without any one of the three of us.

If you’re a local company that might sponsor a rookie FRC team, email me at LucasBian8282@gmail.com.