Our #TeamREV community brings together teams from around the world. Get to know FTC Team #11279: Pure Imagination, representing Mississippi!

Tell us a little bit about your team’s background.

We are a public school district team based in Grenada, Mississippi. We started in 2016. We now include students in the 6th-12th grade. Our FTC team is sponsored by Tennessee Valley Robotics, Harbor Freight, The Meek Foundation, and Grenada School District, along with many smaller sponsors. 

We base everything we do around Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We all dress up like characters from the movie, as well as name our robot after a character from the movie. So far this season, our robots have been Violet Unhinged, Violet, and the robot we took to our state championship was Mecha Goose, a variation on the Golden Goose.

We are excited to announce that we are the first school district in Mississippi to become a FIRST Partner School District. We started 8 years ago, and since then, there are now 2 FTC teams, 1 FRC, and 2 FLL Challenge teams in our district. There are also other teams in our town. We are working to help promote more involvement with FIRST by starting Explore and Discover classes at our lower elementary building. We are very proud of how we have been helping to promote FIRST.

What are a few achievements your team was proud of this season?

Our team is most proud of the fact that we have been able to successfully include 6th graders into the team. We are also proud of how many rookie teams we have been able to help be competition ready at the qualifiers we have attended. 8 rookie teams have shown up with nothing, and we have been able to help them build a simple bot and have working coding before the end of robot inspection. The excitement these teams show from being able to have a working robot is what FTC is all about. 

We are also proud of being financially self-sufficient this season. We have had a partnership with the University of Mississippi that has allowed us to work concession stands at their home sporting events. We have now worked 11 events and have 2 more planned. This partnership has been a tremendous success and has allowed us to become a more closely knit team. Cooking and wrapping thousands of hotdogs and throwing 20 pound bags of ice up 2 stories binds a team together!

What is your team enjoying within the #TeamREV Sponsorship Program?

Our team has greatly appreciated the fact that they can claim to be a member of #TeamREV. We are from a very rural town in Mississippi, and to be able to say we are part of an international group of teams recognized by REV has enhanced the morale of the team tremendously.

We're so glad this Team REV team showed us a "World of Pure Imagination" this season! Follow Pure Imagination on these platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok