ThunderBots is a robotics team representing Spectrum Community School in the 2018 FIRST Robotics Canadian Pacific Regional. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a not-for-profit public charity designed to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology, and to motivate them to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math. Every year FIRST holds many international events that give students opportunities to come together, learn new skills, and compete at various levels. In 2018, FIRST will be bringing its first regional competition into Vancouver Island at the Save-On Foods Memorial Centre; a three-day event from March 14-16. Teams from all over Canada, USA, and Mexico will come together with their accomplished work and compete in an unannounced game designed by FIRST.​

From   the   beginning

Where   we   are   now

This year, our school will be competing in the Canadian Pacific Regional for the first time, with the incredible opportunity to be the competition's home team. Our team, ThunderBots, was just created in November 2017, thus we are all new and very excited to participate in this experience. We are made of approximately 30 students from grades 9 to 12, four teacher mentors, and a currently growing number of community mentors and sponsors as well.

For the rest of this year, we are planning to help out our younger students in middle schools around our area. Getting people interested in robotics and this wonderful community surrounding it. Also, we are taking place in events going on to spread awareness, trying to grow our team as a whole. 

We had a lot of learning to do this whole year, and we cannot say thank you enough to all of our mentors that helped us through it all.​