12/03/2024
It's been a while since we last posted, so I thought we should bring everyone up to date with what's going on with Slight Malfunction.
Our coach family has moved from Mississippi to Texas. This move happened mid-season and as such we weren't able to continue in Mississippi, and didn't have time to start a new team here in Texas, so we're taking this season off. We hope to be back for the 2025-26 season, but aren't able to commit to continuing as of yet.
We are still following the season as it progresses and hope to still participate in other ways, such as volunteering at events, including Worlds in Houston.
We also want to take this time and thank all of our previous sponsors for making our team a reality. There are a few that have really stood out and helped us a great deal over the years. In no particular order:
Burrow Pathology - Our first home! Thank you for sacrificing your gym and offering your space for our team for so long. Having such a central location that was accessible to students made it possible to grow our team. Having HVAC and an internet connection made it possible to survive the Mississippi heat, cold and rain, while still maintaining connection with the outside world! The 24/7 access to "our" lab space, made it possible to be competitive as we often used all 24 hours of the day and all 7 days of the week!
Mike Whatley Honda - Mr. Mike, your excitement and the excitement of your crew every time we brought our robot into your dealership really reflected back into our students and motivated them. Seeing someone outside of the robotics community get so fired up about our robots motivated our students to push harder to make better robots.
MatterHackers, Inc. - Y'all helped bring our crazy idea of printing plastic robots into reality! The time y'all were willing to spend answering our questions about material properties kept those robots from becoming plastic shrapnel on the competition field and made for some really lightweight and therefore very fast robots! Your continuing support throughout the seasons made it possible to become more agile every season and take our robots from "shiny silver boxes" to crazy shapes and angles that allowed us to package everything into smaller packages.
Titan Signs & Wraps, Inc - Your generosity and support with whatever we needed, whenever we needed it (even including team a team member!) has been amazing! Thanks also for the robot wraps that really made our bots look awesome!
Bogue Chitto Technocats - Thank you for adopting us when we were a homeless team! What started out as "y'all can use a corner of our lab until you find a permanent place" became the "Roommate Alliance," sending first one of our teams, then the other to Worlds! Who would have ever guessed that was a possibility? We cherish the time we've had together - time that we spent learning from each other, growing stronger individually, and the lasting friendships that came from so many hours in a brick building out in the back yard, working hard and cheering each other on.
All the volunteers from Mississippi FIRST Tech Challenge Page - The time and energy that everyone involved in FTC in Mississippi puts into this program is what makes the whole thing possible. If it weren't for each and every one of you, none of this would even happen.
And finally, The one, the only, Mr. Mannie Lowe (WHY can't I link you here?) Mississippi's Program Delivery Partner - We don't know how you do it! The energy that you put into making FTC a reality in Mississippi... WHERE does that come from? It's amazing! Not only do you make all the necessary connections to make each evert possible, you're also willing to jump in there and find that one disconnected wire in a team's spaghetti mess and help get that robot back up and running so the team can compete. Always there with a smile, a joke and an encouraging word. You, sir, are one amazing person!
We truly hope to be back next season, but nobody knows what the future brings. Thanks again for supporting our team in every way that each of you have.
On behalf of FTC Team 14236, Slight Malfunction,
Coach Rob
