Season 5 (2019 - 2020)

Team 5980 was 5-12-0 in official play and 5-12-0 overall in 2020. As a member of the FIRST In Michigan district, Team 5980 ranked x having earned x points.

The team has 26 students - 4 seniors, 2 juniors, 12 sophomores, and 8 freshman - and is hungry to return to States and to Worlds.  The team signed up to compete in St. Joseph and West Michigan again.

While the team did not officially mentor any FIRST Global teams, the team was very actively engaged through Mr. Price.  During the summer, Mr. Price met with Team Iceland in Reykjavik while in Iceland for vacation.  Instantly, both Mr. Price and the Icelandic leadership had similar objectives....to roll out FTC across all of Iceland.  Mr. Price served as a judge again to the competition held in Dubai, but also mentored Team Iceland, who made a request for FRC 5980 to mentor Team Iceland.  After the Dubai competition, Dean invited Mr. Price to join his advisory board for FIRST Global, while Mr. Price continued to engage the team with various global teams for cultural awareness opportunities.  The team has already met virtually via WhatsApp or Skype with Team Comoros, Team Namibia, and Team Norway, and plans to meet with many more. Team 5980 has had a memorable season already in sending a box of books to Comoros and helping Team Norway procure parts for their Mars Rover project. EGR...now it stands for Excellece in Global Relations!

The team also had a lot of fun mentoring FRC 8275, Technical Difficulties, a rookie team from Lake Michigan Academy. On a few occasions, members of FRC 5980 went to their school, but mostly FRC 8275 came to EGR to benefit from our tools, mentors, and students. It was a great experience.

Team 5980 nominated Norah M. and Ryan S. as our Dean's List candidates, Mr. Price as our Woodie Flowers Award candidate, and submitted for the Chairman's Award for the first time in team history.

St. Joseph FiM District - March 6-7, 2020

The team went into the competition with high spirits with a solid robot and good messages to share with the judges about the pre-season and our future plans. On Day 1, issues presumably with the roborio and then with climber started to set in, leaving the team with a 2-6 record, but feeling confident for Day 2 as we thought the issues had been worked out. On Day 2, the robot worked quite well, but the team lost all 4 matches. Being in 38th place out of 40 was a bit unsettling, but the top alliance of FRC 2337, EnginNERDS, and two-time world champion FRC 2767, StrykeForce, were able to discern our true capabilities vs. our ranking. We quickly dispatched the opposing alliance in the quarter-finals, but bad luck set in during the semi-finals. In Match 1, the alliance was assessed a 15 point penalty (7 balls @ 15 points each). Not fazed by being down 0-1, Alliance #1 won the Match #2, setting up the rubber match. Match #3 was an epic match up, but the underdogs were able to triple climb while Alliance #1 wasn't able to, making the difference. While disappointing, the team was awarded the Judges Award for our outreach, locally and globally. The team also enjoyed assisting FRC 8363, a rookie team from Marcellus (near Kalamazoo). Since FRC 8275 competed in the Jackson FiM the same weekend, we arrange for the WildCats to oversee them. As it turned out, their mentee team, 8363, competed at St. Joseph, so for a weekend, we swapped mentee teams with each winning the Rookie Inspiration Award in their respective competitions.

West Michigan FiM District - March 20-21, 2020

While the robotics portion of the event was cancelled due to the pandemic, EGR was awarded its first ever Chairman's Award!!!!