Team Phoenix 4-H Robotics Club

Over the last three years Team Phoenix has grown to be more than a robotics team, we are a catalyst for change. Like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes, our story is one of dedication and purpose. From sparking STEM curiosity worldwide to increasing environmental awareness in our communities, we’ve demonstrated that our team’s determination can ignite change. In the last year, we’ve soared higher than ever before by growing our programs to new heights, ensuring STEM reaches every member, every FIRST team, and students around the world.

Our team is ultimately guided by our mission statement: “Changing the Lives of Youth Through Robotics”. We love to spark curiosity for STEM in our community, but we are equally passionate about impacting our current and prospective team members. Our team is structured to spark a lasting passion for STEM and service in every member, shaping their growth throughout the season and well beyond graduation. We welcome students from communities all across NH, growing our team from 22 to 62 members in the past four years. This allows students from a range of backgrounds to benefit from our team’s student-led structure. Every subteam is run by a student lead, with the team being led by a student President. Students are responsible for everything, from designing and building the robot to training new members. This allows participation to be an immersive, hands-on learning experience that sparks a passion for STEM in our members. In the past three years, our team has produced two Dean’s List Finalists, demonstrating the effectiveness of our team management strategy. Team building activities such as holiday parties, senior night celebrations, and interactive games strengthen relationships and create a sense of belonging. 

We also stress the importance of community outreach and service to our members. As a team, we pride ourselves on our growing initiatives to make a difference in our community, and we recognize that the first step is to ignite a passion for outreach in our members.  We begin every season with a series of events serving our immediate community, such as food drives and donations, electronics recycling events, and robot demonstrations. Over the past three years, we’ve organized the donation of 78 full Thanksgiving baskets and hosted five food drives, reinforcing to our members the idea that leadership goes hand in hand with giving back. By instilling the values of FIRST in our members, they are inspired to spread the flame throughout the FIRST community and the rest of the world.

Our team has become a strong and recognizable presence in the FIRST community by actively expanding access to FIRST programs and engaging in meaningful collaboration between teams. Over the past two years, we have helped grow the FLL community by starting 11 new FLL Teams: 5 in 2024 and 6 more in 2025. Of the teams that started in 2024, 4 returned this season, while the 5th moved up to FRC and joined our team. Our outreach has extended beyond NH as well, including the start of an FLL team in Ohio. We have also mentored 9 FIRST teams over the past two years; 65241, 65243, 65244, 65629, 65975, 44232, 70729, 60739, and 60740, providing technical guidance, organizational support, and encouragement to help them succeed. We’ve hosted 6 of these teams in our space, helping them practice their Innovation Project presentations. We host annual open houses, run a yearly FLL camp that has welcomed over 50 total kids, and operate an afterschool FLL club, all of which increases awareness and passion at elementary and middle school levels.

Our commitment to the FIRST community also included significant service through event volunteering, with our members contributing 388 total volunteer hours across FLL, FTC, and FRC competitions. This includes volunteering at two FLL State Championships, three FRC Competitions, two additional FLL events, one qualifier and one FLL Explore festival, and an FTC scrimmage with 19 attending teams that we co-ran alongside FTC team Avant Garde. We actively support FTC collaboration by maintaining a full FTC field in our workspace, which FTC team 27357 regularly uses for practice. 

We have also worked to strengthen connections within the FRC community by inviting multiple teams, including 138, 151, 166, 501, 509, 1058, 1073, and 1729, to use our shop and field space. We also donated 4 MaxSwerve modules to FRC Team 6895. In addition to direct mentorship and hosting, we contribute to the broader culture of learning within FIRST by attending Impact Exchanges in the spirit of collaboration and growth. We also publish our Impact Award resources online so that other teams can learn from our experiences and apply similar strategies in their own communities. Finally, in 2024 we launched our EarthFIRST initiative, an ongoing series of outreach events and collaborative efforts focused on promoting environmentally sustainable practices across the FIRST community. Our rail trail cleanup was the event that launched our EarthFIRST initiative, where members of Team Phoenix contributed to the cleanup by picking up trash to decrease environmental risk. The team gathered at the Nashua City Hall and was able to collect six bags of trash. Additionally, we have hosted multiple electronics recycling events in which our team has received a total of 4,800 pounds of electronics that were then sorted and brought to Aurum Recovery Group, where they were dismantled and recycled; we plan to host more of these events going forward. Another one of EarthFIRST’s goals is to unify FTC and FRC teams who believe in protecting our planet through sustainable engineering, innovative reuse, and caring for the environment. Through EarthFIRST, we encourage teams to reuse and recycle, minimize waste, and think creatively about how to make robotics more environmentally friendly. This can be seen through our EarthFIRST Pledge that states when a team joins EarthFIRST they commit to: 

 1. Recycle and reuse robot parts and materials

 2. Reduce waste at meetings, events, and competitions

 3. Host or participate in at least one EarthFIRST event annually

 4. Promote sustainability within the community

 5. Share ideas and inspire others

 6. Use #EarthFIRST on social media to spread awareness

Through collaboration, education, and shared commitment, we’re making sustainability in robotics stronger. 

Our team takes STEM outreach beyond just FIRST by actively advocating for STEM education across both New Hampshire public high schools and around the world. Through robot demonstration at community events, we've reached over 28,000 people and helped promote programs like FLL to younger students. Online, our robotics-related content has reached more than 100,000 people through social media, and a television spot recorded about us by WMUR has spread the message of FIRST to tens of thousands of viewers. Every year we donate STEM toys to the Nashua Children’s Home to make learning more accessible. We launched our STEM Career Lecture Series last year, which was focused on sparking students’ curiosity about the wide range of STEM careers available to them. We hosted and invited speakers from a variety of backgrounds, genders, and experiences reaching over 350 students so that every student sees that there is a place for them in STEM. Topics included Cyber Security, Technology in the Media Industry, Chemistry in Industry & Government Research, Software Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. We’ve continued this series through a run of short-form interviews with STEM professionals this year, reaching a much broader audience through social media. Our outreach includes 9 workshops for Girl Scout and Cub Scout troops over four years, where we’ve helped scouts explore STEM concepts hands-on while earning a total of 105 robotics badges and 75 engineering badges. We’ve also created lessons designed for ASD and Fairgrounds students using XRPs that we built and tested, reaching over 400 students. 

Outside direct education, we advocate at a legislative level through Reignite STEM, where we drafted and submitted House Resolution 9. To achieve this, the team met with State Representative Thomas and received feedback on their research and learned how to draft a House Resolution. Five team members and three ASD students then testified before the members of the House Education Policy and Administration Committee in support of the resolution. The resolution received tremendous support online, with 477 votes of support and 66 written testimonies, and it passed unanimously through the House. We have continued to work with school boards and local businesses to support stronger STEM graduation requirements. Internationally, our impact reaches far beyond state lines, spreading our flame worldwide. We successfully ran FLL curriculum in the Philippines and taught foundational STEM concepts to over 400 students in India. Team members are currently working with school representatives in India to develop a Robotics curriculum for students with the long-term goal of reestablishing an FLL team for interested kids. The main focus of this mission is to increase STEM opportunities for girls in India. Our team views this work as spreading our flames across seas, proving that even the most difficult barriers can be overcome to ignite opportunity and learning on a global scale. Our efforts have been recognized through coverage by several online publications, showing both our impact and our ability to inspire STEM engagement within our community and beyond.

The story of Team Phoenix isn’t just about robots, it’s about people: team members who find their voice, communities that realize their potential, students worldwide who discover their passion, and a team that proves the power of rising together. As a team, we rise to inspire others to soar. With every spark we ignite, we carry forward the mission of FIRST and encourage others to be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow.