The CocoNuts Robotics "News Feed"

Once again, through the overwhelming generosity of the community of Flagstaff and Northern Arizona, the CocoNuts will be attending the FIRST World Championships in Atlanta, Georgia!!!

This year we made it every team member’s individual responsibility to raise funds for their portion of the travel cost (plane, hotel, etc.) to Atlanta. So we decided to have a spaghetti dinner and raffle, and every member went going around town selling raffle and spaghetti dinner tickets. We received raffle item donations from over 50 local businesses, and we even had all our spaghetti/food related items donated as well! In total our spaghetti dinner and raffle netted $3700!! Members also solicited their friends and family for Arizona Public School Tax Credits to our team. We also had school hat days, car-washes and other miscellaneous fundraisers. As of today every member had funded their own trip ($480), with some going above and beyond (one by the thousands!).

We will be leaving Coconino High School at 4AM tomorrow for our 7:59AM flight from Sky Harbor in Phoenix to Atlanta. It won’t be until Sunday that we return, so no guarantees on new blog posts in Atlanta.

The CocoNuts are proud to represent Coconino High School—the city of Flagstaff—Coconino County—all of Northern Arizona—and the entire Southwest region at the FIRST World Championships. It is inspiring to see our outreach in our community be reciprocated by the kindness and support that our community shows for our team, and we hope to do you proud in Atlanta.

GO NUTS!

It’s official! The CocoNuts have once again qualified for the FIRST World Championship in Atlanta, GA through their reciept of of the Engineering Inspiration Award at the Arizona FIRST Robotics Competition Regional! This is the second highest award given out at regionals after the Chairman’s Award. This year the CocoNuts, in competition for the Chairman’s Award, were beaten by a decades old Hawaiian team, with a budget of upwards of $750,000 (in comparison to the CocoNuts $25,000)

Additionally, CocoNuts team member Tomas Zukowski was one of two recipients of the first annual Arizona FRC Regional Dean’s List Award. He will now compete at the international level with 89 other finalists at the FIRST World Championship for one of ten awards. Perks of winning this include: a waived registration fee for the recipient’s team, a week-long all-expenses-paid Leadership Seminar at FIRST Headquarters in New Hampshire, and a personal letter of recommendation from FIRST leadership to a college or employer of their choice.

In addition, the CocoNuts made it into the semi-finals of the competition as part of the fourth-seeded alliance, which was nicknamed “Team Arizona.” (Go Falcons and Team Caution!)

We’re steeping up our game in every aspect of our team!