Our Mission

Beginnings

Two weeks before the start of the 2007-2008 school year, Westlake High School’s principal Linda Rawlings had a full robotics class, but no teacher to replace the one who had just resigned. Mrs. Rawlings called Norman Morgan, a basketball coach and science teacher at the time, and asked him about coaching a different type of sport. Coach Morgan agreed and worked with Mrs. Rawlings to convert the course into one that included competition elements and an extra-curricular option. That’s how 35 students became the rookie members of FIRST Robotics Competition® (FRC®) Team 2468, Team Appreciate.

2008

The first FRC season we competed in was 2008’s Overdrive. Coach Morgan wanted the team to win the Rookie All-Star Award at their regional competition, an aspiration that didn’t match our limited experience and shop facilities. More importantly, he wanted his students to become leaders of the Austin FRC community, impacting the world beyond the classroom. Team Appreciate rose to the challenge. Working over 30 hours a week, they finished a robot days before the deadline, even finding time to build a second practice robot. After stop-build day, the team didn’t just focus on drive practice. Team Appreciate also shared their love of STEM with children in our elementary schools at Science Days, a tradition we continue annually at each of our district’s 6 elementary schools.

Next stop was our first FRC competition: the 2008 Lone Star Regional. It was like nothing our team had ever experienced before and not what they expected—it was even better. They took in the excitement and spirit of FIRST, picking up how to talk to judges and, even as rookies, reaching out to other teams who needed help. Finishing as the 5th seed and the highest rookie seed, our team thought the day couldn’t get any better, but receiving the Lone Star Regional Rookie All-Star Award set the future of our team in motion.

Growing Our Program

Over the next few years, we continued learning the merits of the engineering process. Our skills improved, and our robots got better. Our facilities grew in size, and we gained more advanced shop equipment. Our team organization also improved, and each year, new and higher standards are set. As we expand our program, we reflect on the past successes and continue to devise unique and engaging ways to spread a passion for STEM.

2023

We were charged up this season! Our new 5-week FLL pilot program testing the waters was a huge success, and we’re looking to scale up in the future to teach more elementary students about basic designing and programming. We hosted 5 FIRST Access meetings and a final competition, assisting 10 students with disabilities in designing and programming their own SPIKE Prime robots to follow lines! Catherine was a Dean’s List winner at both the regional and state tournament! We won the Engineering Inspiration award at both the Dallas tournament and Texas Championship!

2022

In this season, we “Rapidly Reacted” to the changing landscape of FIRST. We created a third FRC team in our program—2689 Team Alpha—to give more students an opportunity to get hands-on experience. We started creating TikTok videos for FIRST’ official account and started hosting STEMGirls Night-Ins to engage girls in our community. We adapted FIRST Signing Day to be celebrated both in-person and online, created TikToks for the celebration to recognize teams around the world! We also started hosting team culture meetings to engage our students with concepts related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. We won Chairman’s at both the Waco tournament and Texas Championship, and we’re so grateful to have been named a Championship Chairman’s Finalist at the end of the season! We also continued innovating on the playing field, with 2689 advancing to Texas Championship, 2687 reaching the quarterfinals of their division at World Champs, and 2568 reaching the semifinals of their division at World Champs!

2021

Striving to change the game, we continued to progress our initiatives despite the challenges placed upon us by COVID. This season, we started several new initiatives and expanded our preexisting ones. We created an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiative in order to spread awareness and foster an inclusive culture within our team and have hosted various EDI speakers at our Stories in Stem events, such as our district’s DEI consultant Dr. Gooden. We also formed our new Assistive Technology initiative, which adapts toys to better suit children with disabilities. SACOT continued digitally throughout this season, hosting virtual law conferences and AMAs. We grew our STEMGirls initiative by adapting our events to be COVID-19 friendly. Our Annual Ice Cream Social event was held outside and was socially distanced to ensure the safety of all attendees, and we started our STEMGirls Summit series, holding 2 virtual events: Open Conversations and Speed Networking, in order to help girls in FIRST connect with one another. This season, 2468 celebrated FIRST’s adoption of our FIRST Signing Day initiative. We also worked with Team 4400 Cerbotics, a team in Mexico, to host an international STEMConnect Session. Team Appreciate won the Calcium Group At Home Challenge and the District Championship Chairman’s Award, and Team Apprentice was a finalist in the Silicon Group At Home Challenge.

2020

As we charged up to power the future, we continued to grow our initiatives and broaden our reach in the FIRST community. We started our speaker series, FIRST in Focus, in order to collaborate and discuss with other teams and spotlight STEM professionals. In response to COVID, many of our events had to be adapted to a virtual format. For example, we collaborated with FIRST HQ to hold a Virtual FIRST Signing Day. By holding this event online, we were able to reach more seniors from many teams across the nation. In order increase FRC and STEM participation at our high school, we created a Junior Varsity FRC team— 2687 Team Apprentice—which debuted this season and makes Westlake High School the first Texan high school to have two FRC teams. Although the competition season was cut short, 2468 ranked second place in the Greenville tournament and won the Chairman’s award at the Greenville and DCMP tournaments!

2019

Launching into FIRST Deep Space, we innovated in several ways how we impact our community. We hosted two SACOT conferences: Gone Virtual! and On the Hill, making student-led advocacy an open-source effort and successfully lobbying for an increase in STEM funding. We also developed the LilyTool, making it easier for others to manufacture and donate Lilypads. Through social media promotion, FIRST Signing Day more than doubled in participation. Our robot, named in memory of Linda McMahon, was our strongest yet. Team Appreciate won both of our district events as captain alliance, winning Chairman’s and Engineering Inspiration. At Texas DCMP, we competed in the Semifinals and were recognized with EI. Our robot’s competitiveness continued to Champs, where we competed in the finals of our division for the second time in our team’s history. Over the summer, we won two off-season events and expanded our outreach to Mexico.

2018

Powering up this season, we expanded many of our initiatives and deepened our impact. We began our work in East Austin, established political advocacy groups in 2 other states, and organized a STEMConnect session in China. We competed at 3 regional events, winning Innovation in Control twice—thanks to the extensive work we spent on developing path-planning and sensor-integration algorithms—and Chairman’s. At Champs, we were honored to be recognized as a Chairman’s Finalist and have our teammate, Joseph Asfouri, awarded Dean’s List. Sadly, we lost our beloved mentor, Linda McMahon, to cancer. Her dedication to our team is remembered through the Legacy of Linda Scholarship.

2017

Puffing through FIRST Steamworks, we had a season of many firsts. We hosted our first SACOT Founders’ and inaugural conferences at the Texas Capitol, had a record number of teams participate in FIRST Signing Day, and expanded our STEMConnect model to Italy. During competition season, this trend of firsts stayed with us. We were awarded the Gracious Professionalism Award and the Imagery Award for the first time, and we were also division finalists at World Champs for the first time (losing to the Houston Einstein winners!). We’d also never had a modular design with drastic iterations between our different regionals, but that’s exactly what we did during FIRST Steamworks: our season of firsts.

2016

As we traversed through the defenses of 2016’s Stronghold, we continued to make waves in the FIRST Community. We piloted our FIRST Signing Day initiative and began laying the groundwork for SACOT. We started off the season close to home at the Alamo Regional, as Scorpius—our robot—was awarded the Excellence in Engineering Award. We then continued onto Utah and rocketed to success. We had our third “2 Chainz,” winning the Utah Regional as the captain of the first alliance and winning the Regional Chairman’s Award. To wrap up our season on a high note, we were honored to receive the Engineering Inspiration Award at Champs for a second time!

2015

In 2015, Team 2468 had an intense season of constant improvement. The team’s constant iteration of the design led to being qualified for World Championship in four different ways. The robot, Orion, performed as one of the best-scoring robots at the Championship event and was eliminated by the world champion alliance in the division semifinals. As a mentor said,  “We continue to work hard and spread the FIRST message. We hope our winning becomes a tradition and that [the 2015 season] will also be our best year ever… again.”

2014

The 2014 season was our best yet. At the Alamo Regional, we were awarded the Entrepreneurship Award. We were honored when mentor Scott McMahon was named a Woodie Flowers Award Finalist. We also did well in the robot competition, finishing as a member of the Finalist alliance. Next stop was the Hub City Regional, where we received our second consecutive Regional Chairman’s Award. Additionally, we were a tournament Winner, as the first pick of the winning alliance captain. We also received our second consecutive Entrepreneurship Award of the season. As an extra special added bonus, team member Michael Keim (Class of 2014) was named a Dean’s List Finalist. We then turned our sights to the Bayou Regional, where we were a Finalist, as first pick of the winning alliance captain. We also received our third Entrepreneurship Award of the season. It was then on to Championships and the tough competition of the Curie Division, where we were named the Engineering Inspiration Award winner.

2013

Our 2013 Ultimate Ascent season began at the Hub City Regional, where we received our first Regional Chairman’s Award. We were further honored when our coach, Norman Morgan, was named a Woodie Flowers Award Finalist. We were so excited we could hardly sleep on the bus ride back to Austin. As a bonus, we also made the first sale of our 3D-printed string potentiometer at Hub City, catching the attention of AndyMark, which would later offer the product through their website. We weren’t finished yet though. Next was the Alamo Regional. There, we were the Competition Winner as the winning alliance captain, and we were recognized with the Engineering Excellence Award. Moreover, one of our FTC teams, Team 3781 Pi-Rho Maniacs, won both the competition and the Regional Inspire Award. At the 2013 World Championship, we competed well, finishing in the semifinals of the Archimedes Division.

2012

In 2012’s Rebound Rumble season, years of cumulative lessons from less successful seasons came together. We received three team awards, finishing as Regional Finalists at the Dallas West Regional. Our FTC teams also performed well, advancing to regional championships. We thought we’d had our “best year ever!”… but we were wrong.