#TeamREV is represented in Idaho by FTC Team #5026: Tesla Coils! Read on to learn more about this team, who you might recognize from the 2024 FIRST Championship!

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

This is the Coils' 13th season, and we have a strong legacy behind us. We are from South Central Idaho and our team is made up of members from four different schools, two counties and four cities. Our team is a 4-H Club team and a Junior Optimist International Club team. This year’s robot is named Mis. Fortune. She's a dynamic collecting, scoring, drone shooting, and hanging little bot.

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

Our team is proud of our friendships with FTC teams from the US and around the world. We've had the opportunity to meet with many of them via video chats this season, allowing us to share our seasons with each other. One of the teams, Titans #19055 from Romania, is a special connection. One of their team members happens to be a foreign exchange student two hours away from us. We were excited to have him as an honorary Coil for the season, joining us at our MV Scrimmage #2 on Jan. 27th and the Idaho State FTC Championship in February. 

We are also proud of the partner-sponsorships we have forged with Tamaki Control Automation Engineering, Siglar, & our main team sponsor, MCM Trucking, which helped us start and mentor four rookie FTC teams in 10 days. Our four rookie teams started at the end of November and the beginning of December. We're so proud of all of the hard work they put in getting ready for our scrimmage on January 27th. All of them were able to drive and score! 

The accomplishment we are most proud of this season started with the dream of one of our founding team members, Sammie, 13 years ago. Sammie aspired to be able to make robotics accessible to everyone and knew there was a gap in this accessibility for the students at the Idaho School for the Deaf & Blind (ISDB). After all options were exhausted unsuccessfully, Sammie's dream was put on hold. We're proud to announce the fulfillment of Sammie's dream with the four robotics camps we are teaching at the ISDB, which began on February 12th! We're so excited to see the impact on these amazing, inspiring individuals and to see what they do with our little robots. Our coaches are excited to see how these inspiring individuals impact each one of us!

FIRST Championship was awesome. We won the Franklin 3rd Place Motivate Award and finished qualifiers 5/5 in 26th place.

What is your favorite part about being in #TeamREV?

Our team is enjoying connecting with other #TeamREV teams. Some of them we were already friends with, but there are many new friends to make.

What else would you like us to know about your team?

Our team had the opportunity to host two Magic Valley FTC Scrimmages this season. For our second scrimmage we had the honor of teaching two other FTC teams how to plan, host, and run an FTC scrimmage. This scrimmage was the largest FTC scrimmage ever held in Idaho with 15 attending teams. That's pretty cool, since we only have 25 teams in the entire state, and it was 3 weeks before our state championship.

Tesla Coils truly embodies the power of connection and friendships within FIRST! Follow Tesla Coils on these platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram