Scott Vitek, an industrial technology teacher at the high school, decided to form a team to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition for the 2005/2006 school year. Back then, team #1806 was known by 'SCET', or 'Smithville Competitive Engineering Team.' SCET started generating interest in the high school, and went on to compete in the Chicago Regional. The team won the Rookie Inspiration Award there, which helped to plant the seeds for future successes.
After a promising first year, team #1806 decided to reinvent themselves. They switched from their previous acronym of SCET to a new one with more personality: Smithville Warriors Advancing Technology, or S.W.A.T. Through growing interest in the school, the team improved upon its initial rookie success in the 2007 Greater Kansas City Regional. Now more experienced, the S.W.A.T. team advanced to the final round and received the Finalist Award. Though their alliance did not come out victoriously, team #1806 gained attention and notoriety for their skillful efforts.
The year 2008 was an exciting one for S.W.A.T. It was the team's third year of competing, and the team was ready to make the jump to being a major player in the FRC. The team felt that confident in its abilities, and added the Oklahoma City Regional to the Greater Kansas City Regional. The team advanced all the way to the finals in the KC Regional, repeating that feat from 2007. Unlike 2007, though, the alliance that S.W.A.T. was a part of emerged as the victor. This accomplishment qualified team #1806 into the national competition in Atlanta, Georgia.
Before Atlanta, however, S.W.A.T. traveled to Oklahoma City for the Oklahoma City Regional. There was no pressure to win, as the team was already guaranteed a spot in the national competition. This fact didn't dull the S.W.A.T. team's performance--the team went on to win the Oklahoma City Regional as well. In a span of a month, the team had won two regionals when they had never before won any. Team #1806 already had their most successful season, and it wasn't done yet. In addition to these regional wins, the members of S.W.A.T. won the Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award in Kansas City, and the Motorola Quality Award for the robot's construction in Oklahoma.
The national competition was held in Atlanta, Georgia in the Georgia Dome from April 17-19. There were 300 teams from all around the United States, in addition to some from other countries. S.W.A.T. competed in the Newton Division. The team went 4-5 in matches, but ended up a very respectable 96th place overall. S.W.A.T. was proud of this accomplishment.
The game for 2009 is called Lunacy. The game was designed to simulate movement on the surface on the moon. The goal of the game was to score balls called Moon Rocks into the trailer of the opposing teams. Although the gravity on the field could not be changed, the S.W.A.T. team immediately achieved the highs that are only possible on the moon
Team #1806 attended the Greater Kansas City Regional on February 26-28. The team was excited to compete in one of the largest regionals around. A total of 61 teams competed in the regional. S.W.A.T. was extremely successful right from the start, and was the #1 ranked team after the qualifying matches. After a stressful but exciting tournament, the red alliance of which Team #1806 was a member won the finals. S.W.A.T. had won the KC Regional for the second straight year--this feat qualified the team for the second straight Atlanta Nationals for the second year as well. In addition to winning the regional, the excellent construction of the robot earned the team the General Motors Industrial Design Award.
When SWAT attended the St. Louis Regional they were up against veteran teams such as team 16 and team 71. SWAT was the third ranked team and was drafted by 1208 for the championship. 1208, 1806, and 1723 were defeated in the semifinals. The team won the General Motors Industrial Design Award a second time for the design of their robot.
The Smithville
Warriors Advancing Technology “S.W.A.T” robotics
teams first competition was in the Kansas City Regional
March 4th , 5th & 6th.
Going into that event the team felt that their chances
were good and that they had a good machine to compete in
“Breakaway” the game presented by FIRST (For Inspiration
and Recognition of Science and Technology) The game was
a soccer style game with speed bumps and a tower to hang
from at the end. The team did not complete the machine
early enough to get all the bugs worked out and log many
practice hours. This proved to be a hindrance as
match after match was played leaving more challenges
then successes.” We needed to control the ball better
and be able to be more mobile and faster on the field.
Things just weren’t clicking” By the end of the ranking
rounds the team was only in the middle of the pack
around 28rd out of 62. The team was drafted
by the 5th ranked alliance to play in the
final tournament. (Only 24 of the 62 teams make it
in to the tournament forming 8 alliances of 3 robots on
each alliance.) The SWAT robot and team were playing
better then they had all weekend but were eliminated
from play by a tough 3rd seed alliance.
Lead mentor Scott Vitek said: “Sometimes that happens,
other teams just solved the problem better, or completed
the task better than we did. Some of them
kept it simple and out performed us.” We love to
look into the complexities of the game and attack it
all. We have some things to change for
The FIRST Game Designers allow for teams to design
modifications and bring them to the next competition to
add to your machine at that event.
The SWAT team did just that. They had two weeks to come
up with ways to make the machine better and modify our
robot in
The robotics team had to settle for second place in the
St. Louis Regional and thus finished up the season short
of its goal of returning to the World Championship in
Atlanta, GA.