The members of Sargon make it their mission to use teamwork, gracious professionalism, and cooperation to conquer any task and to achieve ultimate satisfaction and success.
Long, long ago, in the August of 2007, Sargon first came together as a FIRST team in the "dungeon" of Shawnee Mission East High School. At the time there were less than 10 members: a motley group of individuals who all just wanted to build robots. For being such a small number, the crew managed to really bond together and create a strong, innovative robot to conquer the first Build Season. By the end of their first competition, the members of Sargon walked away with the Rookie All-Star award for their infectious spirit and then went on to Nationals, where they won the Highest Rookie Seed award.
By the next year Sargon had gained substantially more publicity, and a batch of fresh, new recruits showed up at the first meeting to join. The Build Season of 2009 was slightly more confusing, but also incredibly exhilarating; the team ended up reaching the semifinals in the competition, as well as helping plenty of other teams with their programming and drive ability.
Why the name Sargon? Well, in the year 2335 B.C., the Akkadian king Sargon I created the earliest known multicultural empire, successfully establishing rule over all of Mesopotamia.
Last year, Sargon was overjoyed to receive a Website Excellence award!
X
The first robot made by Sargon was for the Overdrive challenge, in 2008. Overdrive asked the teams to, basically, take giant exercise balls off of overhead PVC pipes and carry them around.
Sargon decided, rather than to try to do too much ineffectively, to make a support robot whose only function was to efficiently punt the balls off the rack for other team robots to then carry it around. They called their first baby the Brave Little Toaster. Remember the tv show?
The Toaster ended up being a surprisingly effective design, and because of it, Sargon made it through to Nationals.
The next robot, made for the 2009 Lunacy challenge, was designed to pick up the game's "moonrocks" with an Archimedes screw and throw them out the top. This design was also used by a few other teams.
What made the Brave Little Blender (because it looks like a blender, of course) a contender was its traction control. Lunacy was unique in that the floor of the playing field had a small coefficient of friction, so a primary goal in programming the Blender was making strong ramp-ups and ramp-downs for an efficient use of the motor's energy. Because of its speed and mobility, the Blender placed in the semifinals of regionals at competition.
Team 2335