About Us

Learn more about Team #4146's mission, values, and history.

About Us

Overview

4146 Sabercat Robotics is a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team, which aims to combine the excitement of sport with the rigor of science and technology. The FIRST website defines FRC as: "Under strict rules, limited time and resources, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team 'brand,' hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors. It's as close to real-world engineering as a student can get."

History

During the 2011-2012 school year, multiple students came together to find something that would change the lives of many future high school students: Sabercat Robotics.

In 2013, we decided to expand our team to include more schools and students by starting the FLL Qualifier, which persuaded us to mentor many schools such as Mohave and Tonalea. Throughout the years, we continued to volunteer in our community with the goal of making STEM accessible to all students.

One key program we volunteered at was Scottsdale Community College's GirlPOWERED program. When this was discontinued in 2018, a few of us decided to start a new program with similar goals. This program, now known as Sisters in STEM, has been a huge success, from hosting our previous CyberSiS/online program during the pandemic and our annual celebratory event to our SiS Roadshows.

As we continued to grow Sisters in STEM, we realized that while what we were doing was great, it wasn't enough. This is why, in 2021, we started our partnership with Northern Arizona University's Occupational Therapy program to help them with one of their own initiatives, "Go Baby Go."

"Go Baby Go" is a program that gathers volunteers to combine their STEM skills to build cars that kids can ride in, and then gives them to young disabled children. We have been working with them since then, and we are excited to continue our partnership with them.

Recently, two robotics students from our team realized there was a core part of our team and future that was missing from the STEM initiative: the arts. This led to them starting "Melody Makers" in 2023, a program that teaches STEM to young children through the arts; primarily music.

What we've learned from our history is that, no matter who you are or what you do, you can make a positive impact on the world.