1502's Origin Story

It's an epic!

    "Technical Difficulties" was started in the fall of 2004. The idea came from an inspired senior named Kelly Butcher who wanted to learn more about technology. She contacted Mrs. Bentley, the school's computer teacher, about a program that she could get into to learn more. Kelly and Mrs. B were contacted about a Lego Mindstorms Competition at Alma College. Kelly assembled a team and participated in the competition. Kelly then asked Mrs. B if they could start a computer club at the school. She then contacted Keith McClary and he told her about FIRST, a robotics program aimed at educating high school students. Kelly was very interested in starting a team, but she didn't think that she could get enough money to start one. Mrs. B told her not to be discouraged---anything was possible. A few weeks later the team met for the very first time. We had a few "test" meetings to see how many people were interested in the team, and we were amazed at the turnout. We thought that we had a fairly large team until we attended our first FIRST competition, then we realized that we had some work to do. It was our rookie year, and we weren't very confident that we were going to do any good, but we never gave up. For the first few weeks we were trying to find a permanent work shop location, but we were having trouble. We didn't want to use the school, because there wasn't a lot of space. We were using some rooms at the Chrysler Proving Grounds for a while, but we ran out of room, and it wasn't very organized. We then decided to move our operation to the school. We got permission to share a room and a storage closet with the Tech teacher. Two years later, the room was remodeled, and we got our own storage closet. Our team has grown tremendously and we are confident that we will have fun. That's the only thing that matters.