Team 342 started the year out on a positive note by winning the first award for the season at the 2006 Kickoff Meeting. We won the Safety Animation Award and it was broadcast worldwide on the NASA channel. Our animation was played at all 30 Regional Events and at the Championship Event. This is the second time we have won this award.


The 2006 season was the most challenging year that our team has ever experienced from a financial, engineering, and travel viewpoint. We did manage to raise the resources to compete and we struggled with our robot's drive system all season long. We did manage to ship on time and Team 342 competed at the Florida Regional at the University of Florida where we won the Imagery Award. This award is given to the team that best represents the vision of FIRST. We also received the prestigious Florida Governor's Award which was hand-delivered to our team by Governor Jeb Bush at the opening ceremony on Friday. We ranked 30 th out of 51 and we were not selected by another team to compete in the finals. The team enjoyed cheering for the many teams in the playoffs and our gracious professionalism showed through as we supported them with parts and components from our robot.

At the Palmetto Regional in Columbia , SC Team 342 was recognized for our safe practices and safe pit area. We were awarded the Best Sportsmanship Award for our team's on-going efforts to help a rookie team that didn't have the resources to build a robot but managed to build one anyway. Our students and mentors were able to lead the team to get their robot ready for competition. We also won the Visualization Award for our animation entry. Our robot was ranked 28 th out of 48 teams. Fortunately, Team 1051 selected us as an alliance partner and we played in the finals. Our
alliance was eliminated in a rematch after a series of close battles in the quarterfinals. Thanks to Team 1051 for selecting us for your alliance!

We did not qualify for the Championship Event, so our team did not travel to Atlanta. Although we did not go to the competition we still earned a major award. We placed second in the Autodesk Inventor Award category. This gave our team a computer and some software for our schools. We also earned a web-site award for our quality web-site. Although this was a difficult year, we were very successful with the transfer of knowledge and skills to our students and getting them excited about engineering and technical skills training. Our student team members were excellent and the mentors did not need to get involved with any robot repairs or changes as a result of this. All in all…it turned out to be a very good year despite the challenges that had arisen during this year's competition season.