Operations and Organization:
The new year means setting up for success, including organizing our Pit, managing operations, and handling new material shipments. Our shop manager, Ellery Han, has been cleaning the Pit and delegating tasks to sort last year’s parts, screws, and miscellaneous items. A well-organized Pit is crucial for efficiency. With packages arriving nonstop, we order early to avoid delays and ensure we have everything needed for the Fall and Build Seasons. Students help sort and take inventory, ensuring each subteam knows what materials are available for their projects.
The operations subteam, in which all members are required to contribute at least 4 hours of admin tasks and additional upkeep work, is led by our new operations director, Claire Mayder. She’s been training new students and leads, applying for grants, and more. Our new communications lead, Jahnvi Bheemarasetti, assists Claire by training first-year students on the website and managing blog uploads.
Our team fundraises the majority of its money in the Fall Season, this includes receiving money from sponsors such as the Wild Cat Foundation–our school foundation that raises money for school-related activities. Big thanks to them as well as all of our other sponsors! We’ve also had significant work done in documentation for operations to ensure efficiency in the build season and the following years. We have also had a lot of work going on with ordering, designing, and organizing apparel for the team and others(teams and parents), which will be available by New Year. More will come on this announcement in the following blogs. You can also find more information about us and our time at robotics on our social media:
Instagram: @ironclaw972
Youtube: Iron Claw Robotics
Competition Selection:
Finally, our Leadership Council, team managers, and mentors had to go through the important process of competition selection. Their strategy for competition selection has been based on the other teams going to the competitions as well as considering finances for logistics. They were hard at work trying to select a competition where our team had a shot at winning, such as the Sacramento Regional.
As of current, 972 is going to Pinnacles Week 1, Sacramento Week 3, and East Bay Regional Week 6. We’ll see you all there! We’re so excited for an animated build season, let’s do this!
