After competing for a year with FTC team 9761 The PrestidigiTaters, sisters Jocelyn and Katelyn decided to start a new community FTC team in Southern Utah organized with Washington County 4H. They worked hard to recruit 4 new team members and the team got busy with outreach events and fundraising.
Many of the team members were enthusiastic about the Disney television show Phineas and Ferb, so they decided to base their team identity around the animated duo’s pet Platypus and his identity of a Secret Agent spy for the Organization Without a Cool Acronym (OWCA). Their similarly named team, Team Without a Cool Acronym (TWCA) secured a large grant from Washington County 4H and registered their team during the offseason with a jumpstart grant from FIRST.
During their debut season, Skystone, they experienced great success. They won 2nd Inspire at their first competition and advanced to the state championship! In other qualifiers, they won in many different categories including the Think and Control awards and even 1st Inspire at Utah Tech University. On the state championship level, they won the Motivate award in Utah, and the Connect award in Idaho.
During the 2020-2021 Ultimate Goal season, TWCA added 3 rookies to replace 2 graduating seniors from the previous season bringing the team roster up to 7 members. They started off strong and walked away with a 1st Place Inspire win at their very first qualifier at West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. After working hard and placing second or third in almost every award category at the Hurricane High School qualifier, TWCA spent a lot of time preparing their custom robot and themselves for the State Championship. TWCA’s hard work paid off as they won 1st Inspire at the State Championship and was a Finalist Alliance team.
For the 2021-2022 Freight Frenzy season, TWCA started what promised to be their best season yet and jumped to a 9 member team. TWCA members far exceeded the amount of outreach and volunteer work they had performed in their previous two seasons and raised over $30,000 to financially achieve their season goals. TWCA won the Inspire Award at both the Hurricane Qualifier and the Utah Region Championship advancing to the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. Highlights for the team members were traveling to Santa Monica, California to meet Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, co-creator of Phineas and Ferb and meeting teams from all over the world at the FIRST Championship!
The 2022-2023 Power Play season saw large shift in TWCA team members as 4 seniors graduated from the team. 4 rookies with no FIRST Tech Challenge experience were added to the team in May 2022 bringing the official team count to 7 students. The new TWCA lineup will compete for the first time on December 10th, 2022.
The mission of our team is to learn new skills, grow friendships, form partnerships with our local tech community and gain experience. The team members of T.W.C.A strive to expand FIRST in our community through volunteer and outreach events. As a team, we will grow together as we learn new things and push ourselves out of our comfort zones. We will work hard to receive an understanding of science and technology.
Let’s build something together.
We are always looking for passionate students grades 8-12 and adult mentors to join our team! Contact us for more information on how you can investigate our team or attend an event. Applications for new members will be reviewed in May 2023.
Team Without a Cool Acronym 