254C

Posted Jan 5, 2013 By Jonathan Chang In Static Content

Team History

Team 254C was the second team founded as part of Team 254's period of expansion in the 2008-2009 season. The team distinguished itself under the leadership of Derrick Dominic and Roshan Patel by winning numerous tournaments, including Pan Pacific. Following the graduation of its founding members, 254C changed hands multiple times, being led by Aaron Johnson in the 2010-11 season and Daniel Fernandes in the 2011-12 season.

After two relatively uneventful seasons, 254C made an incredible comeback in the 2012-13 season. Despite the fact that it is currently crewed almost exclusively by sophomores and freshmen, 254C has had an impressive season, being the first 254 team to seed 1st at a Sack Attack tournament and subsequently winning the Bellarmine Tournament, thus qualifying them both for Worlds and the California State Championships. Like 254B, 254C tends to create simple but reliable designs and stick with proven concepts. As a result, they are the only 254 team this season that has not seen a need to make major design changes.

Current Members

• Captain: Tarun Midde
• Co-Captain: Nick Verducci
• Driver: Van Tran
• Coach/Head Programmer: Brandon Gonzalez
• Scouts/Build: Patrick Bedard, Cam Poole, Joncarlo Avila, Jeffrey Garman, Michael Ramstad, Jack Lee, Jackson Hoeke, Austin Shin, Jay Deshpande, Nathan Rooke

Current Season Overview

Team 254C started off the year unsure of what to expect. With two sophomore captains and a team of mostly freshmen, they decided to keep their design simple. They went with a standard “U” style drive base with four 4” omni-wheels and 4 high strength motors. The robot’s  arm went through several iterations of the same six-bar design, and was finally extended to be able to descore from the high goal. The intake caused the most problems for Team C. They tried various kinds of horizontal rollers, from gears to wheels to tread. The current and final iteration uses alternating tread and small omni-wheels. At their first tournament in San Ramon, C made it to the semifinals—not great, but better than expected. With some fine-tuning and more practice, they managed to win the next tournament, at Bellarmine. The third tournament, at Northridge, was disappointing for not just C, but for the whole team. They are looking forward to competing at the State and World Championships.

Past Robots

• 2009: "Danger"
• 2010: "Beast Mode", "Basilisk", "Chimera"
• 2011: (unnamed)
• 2012: (unnamed)
• 2013: "The Hulk" (current)

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