Team History

1998 – The Big Chill

In our first year of competition, the Arctic Warriors received the Rookie All-Star Award at the New England Regional in Manchester, New Hampshire. At the Nationals in Orlando, Florida they won the first round they played in. The robot was named "The Big Chill" and consisted of three subsystems: the arm, the gripper, and the drive system. Four wheel drive was used for the drive system powered by two drill motors. The front and rear wheels were connected by polycord. Assistant Principle Greg Avellino drove all the way up to Manchester, New Hampshire to cheer these rookie robotics student's on during their very first competition.

1999 – Ice3

The robot was named Ice3 or Ice "cubed". This was the first year of robot alliances, where two robots competed against two other robots in a match. The pairings were not announced until moments before the match. A disappointing finish at New England Regionals in Hartford, CT fueled the Warriors to work harder and at Nationals they finished in the top 40. We had an amazing round with another team and came very close to having the highest possible score.

2000 – Deep Freeze

At the Johnson and Johnson Mid Atlantic Regional, the Warriors were plagued with motor problems and finished in second to last place. They returned home and worked diligently to fix the problem, and ended up finishing in the top 50% in Florida. Three seniors on the team were awarded scholarships, two to Clarkson University and one to Drexel College.

2001 – Cool Heat

In their most exciting season to date, the Arctic Warriors finished 8th in the Mid Atlantic Regional, which qualified them for play-offs. They continued on to Orlando and did so well that the 4th place team chose them to be their partner. In the playoffs the team did well but lost 3 games to 2 in the division semi-finals. Three Acrtic Warrior Seniors were awarded scholarships to Clarkson University.

2002 – The Arctic Warrior

First day drive problems slowed us down at Rutgers, but we rallied on the second day to get picked to be on one of the final alliances. Our alliance was eliminated but we had a great showing. We also attended the national event at Disney.

2003 – The Arctic Warrior

This year's Robot had a very unique capability that earned it the nick name the "Limbo Bot". Since it could flatten out so it could be driven under an 18" high bar and then go full verticla after that. In addition, one very pregnant technology teacher Mrs. Karen Dykeman worked under the robot with a special set of (3) suction cups to keep the robot from being pushed on the plastic playing surface. Mrs. Dykemen also came up with a very inventive way to create suction and seal the (3) suction cup from each other using (2) pneumatic cylinders.

With the increasing number of teams in 2003, FIRST changed the rules so that not all teams would go to Nationals each year. We elected to go to 2 regionals - Cleveland and Rutgers. A string of bad luck at Cleveland gave us a worse finish than we had hoped for, but we learned a lot about the robot that helped us prepare for Rutgers. At Rutgers we had motor problems early, but rallied from 43rd place to finish in 12th! An amazing comeback but not enough to get us noticed and picked for the finals.

2004 – Snobot

This year the team elected to return to the Buckeye Regional in Cleveland. Even though the robot worked well, the team only made it to 32nd place. Despite that, we won the Most Outstanding Website Award.

This year was also the teams turn to go to the National competition, now held in Atlanta, Georgia. We had a few chances to use some of our special features, such as standing back up after we tipped over, but we still missed being in the finals, ending 23rd in our division.

2005 – Cold Fusion

We had perhaps our best build season ever. We had the robot completed in time to do some serious driver training. We attended the inaugural Finger Lakes Regional at RIT which allowed us to further refine our design.

Everything came together at the Buckeye Regional where we finished in 4th place and , for the first time in Arctic Warrior history, we were an alliance team captain. Our alliance was eliminated in the first playoff round but, thanks to tetra-man (our inspirational leader), we were awarded the Team Spirit Award.

2006 – Big Chill 2

In 2006 the team competed in the Buckeye Regional and went to Atlanta for the Nationals. It was a very difficult build season. On the next to the last weekend of build, we discovered a major design flaw in our robot. With a week to go, we had to completely rebuild out robot. To make things worse, a snow day on Friday of the final week put us even further behind.

Despite all that, we ended up as the Buckeye Regional Champions along with alliance partners Team 272, Landsdale Catholic High School from Landsdale, Pennsylvania, and the Martians, Team 494, Goodrich High School from Goodrich, Michigan! Our championship alliance went through the finals undefeated.

2007 – Snobot

2007 was the 10th season for the Arctic Warriors! The team attended the Finger Lakes Regional and the Buckeye Regional. The robot performed well in both regionals and the drivers were exceptional at scoring tubes on the rack. Despite a few bad matches, we were picked to be in final alliances at both regionals.

Unfortunately, the story was the same in both regionals, we lost in the first round of the finals by a score of 2 matches to 1. As in life the students learned that while their design was good, robot did well and competitve there is that facture of unexpectes items that come to play.

On a real positive note, in the Buckeye Regional first round, our alliance scored the maximum number of total points posible for a round at a regional.

2008 - Snobot

2008 marked the second time in team 174's history that the team has won a regional event. Our first time was in 2006 in the Buckeye Regional, in addition to this win at the Fingerlakes Regional. To describe the series of events which sparked this win is in itself oddly improbably. As we arrived at RIT on our first day for the practice rounds, we found ourselves riddled with issues, ranging from underpowered batteries, to abused manipulators and gears through the wear and tear of competition. However, on our second day, we performed quite well, finishing the day in 10th place out of approximately 42 teams, a very respectable position for the FIRST competition, especially considering that the top 8 alliances pick who goes into the finals. With only one match left for the day.

Friday, we had a reasonably solid foundation no matter what the result of the match, which was in our favor, as we lost our final qualifying round, to leave us at 14th, still a very respectable placement. Unfortunately, while we were optimistic about being chosen for an alliance with such a high rank, we were not selected. Instead we were forced to wait outside the arena for a few hours while we waited for a chance to replace a fallen team, as we were first in line as a backup team. As we approached the finals, in the first match, team 191's tower was catastrophically damaged beyond the repair period allotted, and after their first win, we were allowed to step in for default silver medals, as alliance team members of team 20 and team 2053.

As an eerie return from Thursday's problems, we lost our second final match and were only given one more chance to win the finals for best two out of three. By replacing our battery and backup battery, however, we came back to serve as an asset to the match's scoring, finishing the round four points behind the blue alliance. With luck, however, the judges called a penalty against the blue alliance for pushing our robot during scoring, and we were awarded as FIRST 2008 Fingerlakes Regional Champions.

2009 - Snobot

This year, the Artic Warriors didn't come home empty handed. The Snobot finished in 22nd, with 4 wins and 3 losses. However, the drive team preformed considerably well, and earned the respect of the #1 Seeded Alliance (Team 188, and Team 1507) and was picked to join as the third and final alliance partner. Combining Team 1507's undefeated robot, Team 188's shooter, and 174's defense, the alliance went on to win the finals, and had a record breaking final match score of 131 to 41! The Arctic Warriors are also the only team to ever win twice in a row at the Finger Lakes Regional.

On Friday, at the end of the first day of qualifying matches, the Snobot earned the Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award, for its Optical Mouse Traction Control System. The Optical Mouse system was the brain-child of the subset of the Arctic Warriors team which meets every Saturday (Tuesdays and Thursdays on season) known as "OSR". Congratulations to those who worked on this specific subsystem, especially Mr. Nagy and Kenny Ballentine.