Team History

After a slow start to the season, Team 449 went undefeated at the Chesapeake District Championship to win for the second straight year—one of just five FRC teams to accomplish the feat.

AWARD CITATION (Quality Award, Dchamps): "This team’s detailed checklist ensures they tension their belts for precision and accuracy. In just 8 minutes, they can replace anything -- with time and parts to spare. Their strategic approach allows them to SUSHI ROLL and score maximum points on the field."

Four blue banners, including the FIRST Impact Award at Severn. At Worlds, we ended ranked 10th in Newton division and made it to Match 13 in the playoffs.

Bunnybots: Achilles and Patroclus

We made two bots for Bunnybots this year: Achilles by our veteran team and Patroclus by our rookies.

---

VIDEO: Watch Lobster's reveal video.

AWARD CITATION: "This highly motivated team created meaningful and lasting changes within their community. Their extensive mentorship efforts have this team breaking down barriers and extending access to STEM education. Their dedication to inclusion, innovation, & outreach shows with their annual BUNNYBOTS competition."

NEWSLETTERS: Fall 2024 | Winter 2024-25 | Spring 2025

The team won back-to-back events at Blacksburg VA and Owings Mills MD, and received the Gracious Professionalism Award at the District Championship.

Bunnybots: Lilo and Stitch

We made two bots for Bunnybots this year: Lilo by our veteran team and Stitch by our rookies.

---

VIDEO: We were the subject of a "Behind the Bumpers" video!

VIDEO: Watch Whiplash's reveal video.

We started a FIRST Lego League team for elementary and middle schoolers. Voyager reached the playoffs at three straight events.

Bunnybots: Cinnabun

Our robot for our 2022 Bunnybots.

BLOG: "On September 10th, FRC Team 449 hosted our First FLL team's build meeting! We started building EV3s, learned how to program them, completed an exciting build challenge, and talked about our research project!"

NEWSLETTERS: Oct 2022 | Nov 2022 | Dec 2022 | Jan 2023

Hyacinth went undefeated across two Greater DC events, serving as alliance captain at the second, and the team won the Entrepreneurship Award at the District Championship.

Bunnybots: Pebbles

Our robot for our 2021 Bunnybots. Ranked 9th at the event.

In the fall, we held Bunnybots as usual. Atlas competed at Bethesda before COVID-19 canceled the rest of the season. In response, we started Pandemic Programming, a free coding curriculum in Scratch, Python, and Java, taught by 449 members to K-12 students anywhere.

Bunnybots: Claude

Our robot for our 2019 Bunnybots.

---

BLOG: "After nearly two weeks of recruitment, we had an awesome turnout from students both inside and outside of the magnet programs at Blair...After 4:30, we still had about 10 rookie members, and our various subteams tasked them with various activities. Electronics worked on soldering and basic CAD skills, Mechanics worked on building a squirrel trap and using the machines, Programming worked on learning the ropes of the computers and our organizational system, and Business started to bond over various team and personal stories."

In the fall, we held our first Bunnybots. We won the Bethesda event and received its Entrepreneurship Award—then a second award at Blacksburg.

Bunnybots: Labo

Labo can place balls in the crates and was designed with a ground intake and carousel, our first robot since 2013 to not have a tank drive. At the tournament, Labo went 6-3-0, became an alliance captain, and won the event while ranking 3rd.

---

NEWSLETTER: "To strengthen our team's new members and leadership, we hosted the first Chesapeake Bunnybots in 2018, an event inspired by Team 1540...We also began using a centralized communication platform, Basecamp, to schedule meetings, send out progress reports, and assign tasks, maximizing team cohesion. This extends to 449 alumni, with whom we maintain strong ties through frequent updates and event invitations."

VIDEO: Watch Legasus' reveal video.

BLOG: "This is the first time in many years our team has won an event! ...Additionally, our team won the Entrepreneurship award for the first time... We are honored to see the recent growth in our business subteam be recognized and hope to continue improving our business and outreach as rapidly as last year."

Navi won the Innovation in Control Award at the Central MD event.

NEWSLETTER: "Our business subteam was created in 2017 to expand our outreach, funding, community-building, and recruitment efforts. This established us as a high-impact FRC team in the FIRST Chesapeake region while providing additional funding for our robot-building endeavors."

Calcifer earned the Innovation in Controls Award at the Greater DC event.

NEWSLETTER: "For years, we lacked a sustainable long-term model for the team and failed to train rookies; the problem seemed impossible to tackle. Rookies had to learn the ropes on their own, limiting growth and forcing us to settle for less progress when we could have achieved more. Change was undoubtedly necessary. In 2016, we completely redesigned our team. In order to boost rookie participation, we implemented a veteran-rookie system where veterans prioritized teaching and engaging new members."

VIDEO: Calcifer's reveal video.

ROUS earned the Team Spirit Award at the Greater DC event and reached the semifinals at Hampton Roads.

WEBSITE: "Over multiple years, The Blair Robot Project has demonstrated their robots at school events including science fairs and festivals, such as the Takoma Park Middle School Science Festival. Every year, The Blair Robot Project holds an annual demonstration and bake sale in Downtown Silver Spring, a local hotspot, for the public to come out learn about the team and FIRST Robotics. Members of The Blair Robot Project have also supported and promoted FIRST in community schools, like the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in Washington, D.C, by mentoring local FLL teams. The Blair Robot Project has participated in Females in Science and Technology workshops where team members lead hands-on robotic activities for middle school girls from across the county. The Blair Robot Project demonstrations are always a crowd favorite at community gatherings."

BLOG: "We go upstairs every hour to check how much snow there is. If you are not on our robot mailing list, then you may not know that robotics will be working through the snow at Urjita’s house. The 2016 Skeleton Crew has been employed. They will be sleeping, eating, showering, and robot making in my basement. I am surrounded by dried goods, 80-20 stock, and a sleeping Aaron. We plan on using the next two to four days (it worries me about how long Team 449 will be stranded here), to plan Weeks 3 and 4 in addition to working on ball intake."

Harrison Zheng was named a Dean's List Finalist.

REVEAL VIDEO: It's pretty great.

CHAIRMAN'S AWARD VIDEO: Submitted as part of the team's application for FRC's top award. "Devoted as we are to robotics during the build season, our work as a team does not stop after competition. Our team bleeds, sweats, and cries robot 365 days a year. The Blair Robot Project is getting into our elementary schools, getting into the middle schools, and spreading the message at Blair High School, promoting the virtues of young people being innovators and creators with respect to technology and science and engineering and math."

Mentor Sharon Goodall was named a Woodie Flowers Finalist at the Pittsburgh Regional.

449 earned the Innovation in Control Award at the Washington DC Regional. Sagarika Das was named a Dean's List Finalist at Chesapeake.

BLOG, Oct. 13, 2011: "Wow. This year’s team is huge. We’ve had over 70 people at meetings, in part thanks to the “I Built A Bot” video, as well as increased recruitment efforts by veteran team members. We’ve even attracted students from other schools. For sure, we have tons of rookies, and it seems, a lot less veterans than the past year. With that said, we have tons of training to do, but I’m pretty sure everything will fall into place by Build Season."

TWEET, Feb 21, 2012: "It took six weeks to plan our robot and two days to actually build it... #GoTeam"

449 earned the Team Spirit Award and Aaron Tucker was named a Dean's List Finalist at the North Carolina Regional.

BLOG: "It was our last regional for this season, and honestly, an awesome way to finish. On Thursday, we spent most of the day improving the robot based on our experience at the DC regional. This process took a lot longer than we thought. Combined with the many mishaps such as failed jaguars, we were unable to get a practice round in. That morning, when safety inspectors came around, we discovered we left our drive station back at home. Surprised by this fact, we quickly adapted and borrowed two joysticks from other teams and bought joysticks from a Best Buy in the neighborhood. We then bought a shelf and mounted the joysticks onto it for our makeshift drive station. Much thanks to Tim for taking care of this; it was incredibly inspiring how we were all able to get along and fix our problem." [Read on for the rest of a remarkable tournament story.]

Team 449 earned the Creativity Award at the North Carolina Regional.

WEBSITE: "We made it to the quarter finals at North Carolina after performing excellently at DC, making it to the semifinals and missing the finals by a single match."

WEBSITE: "Outside of the build and competition seasons, we focus on increasing our team's visibility in our area. We routinely demonstrate our robots at various public events, both within our school and in the greater community. These outreach efforts only allow us to spread interest in science and engineering, and also teach members good public speaking skills and help them to attract other young people to science and engineering."

TEAM QUOTES | partial list of TEAM ALUMNI

A robot retooling after DC Regionals led to the team's best finish yet at Chesapeake Regional: 7th of 55 teams.

WEBSITE: "One of the team's biggest successes at the D.C. Regional was the completion (from the perspective of everybody but the developer, who is still working) of a slick scouting system, which enables data to be rapidly collected and compiled. This data includes photographs, notes on the details of the robots, and qualitative ratings as well as records of past performance. Almost everybody not in pit crew was busy gathering data for the scouting network. Although the team did not win the award for the best scouting network, the network was quite effective. A bit less effective was the team's ability to advertise itself: hundreds of buttons were made, but nobody got around to handing them out."

BLOG, reporting on the 2009 Battle O'Baltimore: "Through both regionals, the chain on the back wheel had a tendency to eject itself, a problem that was never solved. A few hours of tweaking at the last meeting proved worthless as it hit the regolith on practice day. Using the few supplies we brought, one of our team members was able to fashion a triangular brace to keep the swerve assembly from shaking. It really was a miracle fix. Lacking time, space, and resources, we were able to make use of existing holes and pre-fabricated connectors. After that, the wheel was rock-solid and the chain hasn’t failed since."

WEBSITE: "The success of the VEX building last fall has lead us to create an in-team competition that is designed to prepare new team members for competing in FIRST by working in groups to build robots with current members of the team serving as mentors."

BLOG, Nov. 15, 2007: With the final dates of the VEX competition fast approaching, several teams are beginning to wonder whether they will finish on time. There will be an all-day meeting on Saturday, December 1st, for the teams who need the additional time. Already, an incredible diversity has developed between the robots, as teams focus on radically different strategies and mechanisms. Some robots are specializing in quickly scoring many balls in the low goals, while others are going for the high goal or simply planning on getting the bonus points. The competition itself is eagerly anticipated, as students wonder how these very different robots will compare."

WEBSITE: "We continued to play well at Chesapeake, this time making it into the semifinals, with the help of our alliance captain 2234 and team 341. Despite the strong play of our alliance, our stint in the elimination tournament came to an end when our potentiometer was broken off of our shaft, rendering our ball manipulation system unusable in the semifinal matches. With any luck, we will be able to once again show off this year's robot at the [inaugural] Battle 'O Baltimore this summer."

BLOG: "In preparation for the competition, the team has decided to rebuild both the ramp and the gripper of the 2007 robot. We hope that these changes will enable us to be more effective and cut down on the overall weight of the robot...On another note, we also held a bake sale over the summer. It was successful, from two bake sales we made around $1,000."

WEBSITE: "Unfortunately, most of our members were seniors and graduated in 2004, leaving us with too few experienced members to compete in 2005 or to do particularly well in 2006. This year (2007), though our robot did not rank that highly, we are proud of how well we designed our robot, which had the capability of performing very well.

WEBSITE: "We have always prided ourselves with being almost exclusively student managed, student designed, and student built. Our goal is to teach our student members how to be effective engineers, and we firmly believe that experience is the best teacher. Even though we don’t always have as awesome a robot as the higher-budget teams, we have always learned from the experience. As most of our members were new this year, we spent the fall building and programming VEX robots, which are smaller scale 'erector set' robots."

Team 449 notched our first event win and third trip to the National Championship.

VIDEO: Quals 88 Curie Division 2004

Team 449 won the Engineering Inspiration Award at the Chesapeake Regional and a second trip to the National Championship.

WEBSITE: "In January of 2003, a small group of student mechanics disappeared in the 210's hall of Blair, near the small town of Silver Spring, Maryland, while participating in a competition. Six weeks later, a robot was found..."

WEBSITE: "The Blair Robot Project, a member of the FIRST robotics competition, involves the students of Montgomery Blair High School, with the assistance of certain corporations and government agencies, in the process of designing, building, and operating a robot that performs a specific task. The students are the ones controlling every stage of the project, and as they solve the variety of problems that need to be overcome to succeed in the project, they learn technical skills, time management, and teamwork."

WEBSITE: "This year the Blair Robot Project has about 50 students, 7 engineers and 3 teachers. NASA and Sigma Space have contributed money, but we are still trying to raise more support for our larger team. New to the team this year are engineers from ARL and NIST who are bringing their experience along with some of the materials of their labs."

In our very first season of competition, Team 449 reached the National Championship—just the ninth ever held.