The Tahoma Bear Metal team anxiously awaited for FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) to announce their mission for the 2016 competition season on Jan. 9. The second they found out the game has a medieval theme, they got to work.

FIRST is a mentor-based program that builds science, engineering and technology skills. Their mission is to inspire people to be science and technology leaders. Every year, FIRST announces a theme and a mission for the participants who then have to build a robot from scratch, to fulfill the mission.

The Tahoma school district started participating in the FIRST program in 2007 and the team is still going strong. In 2014 the team started their first Washington Girls Generation event, where only the girls from teams compete in the postseason.

This year, the teams have to build a robot to capture the opposing alliance’s castle by shooting boulders and destroying defenses. The teams have until Feb. 23 to build and test their models, before they have to bag up their robots. It is a six week process where the teams are working nonstop. The Bear Metal team is in the shop six days a week, five hours a day.

Alex Gibbs, student secretary of communications of the Bear Medal team, said he is excited to work with all of the new team members. Their team lost about half of the members at the end of last year when they graduated, he said. The hardest part about the competition is teaching first time team members how to do everything.

“Most first time team members don’t know anything about building robots or using our computer programs so we have to start from the beginning with them,” Gibbs said.

Helping one another learn new programs and build every part of the robot is very important to the competition, team member Adam Wulfing, said.

“If we don’t work as a team, nothing would ever get done,” Wulfing said. “Most of the time it just feels like we are hanging out because it is so much fun.”

Thanks to the FIRST program and their ability to be part of the team, Gibbs and Wulfing want to further their education when they graduate from high school and go into engineering. Wulfing wants to be part of the STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) program.