Baxter-Mentored Team Has Best Ever Showing in Robotics Competition Mountain Home's Robot Rocks in Celebration of Science and Technology Competing against more than 340 teams from the U.S. and seven other countries, the "Baxter Bomb Squad" – 17 students from Mountain Home High School mentored by Baxter employees – had its best showing ever in the championships of the 2008 FIRST OverDrive Robotics Competition, held April 17-19 in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The Mountain Home High School team surrounds its gold-medal winning robot, "Two-Minute Warning," following the regional round of the FIRST Overdrive 2008 Robotics Competion. The team subsequently earned a silver medal in the championship round at the Georgia Dome in April. The team won the gold medal in its division and reached the finals of the FIRST global championship round, placing second for a silver medal. To get there, nine Baxter Mountain Home employees joined with parents, teachers and other community partners and mentored the students for four busy months, designing, prototyping, building, testing, debugging, and fine-tuning the winning robot. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) annually sponsors the series of regional and global robotics competitions, which it describes as “the ultimate sport for the mind.” "Mountain Home volunteers logged more than 1,700 hours of service in 2007 for FIRST," says Roger Horton, director Engineering, at Mountain Home. "We were supported by the Mountain Home Science and Technology Group and Mountain Home Schools. A total of 73 volunteer person-days, including 40 days of vacation, have been spent so far in 2008, just traveling to the two regional tournaments and the national championship. Volunteers donate their gas, meals, and lodging expenses at times, to keep costs down. The students, who are hand-picked by the high school to take part, also conduct various fund-raising efforts throughout the year to help pay their way." Mountain Home's other dedicated mentors attending the competition were John Novak, senior principal engineer; Andy Marts, senior engineer; Brandon Padgett, senior engineer; David Thompson, maintenance technician; and Kevin Beckham, plant controller. Other 2008 mentors who cheered the team on from home were Greg Mills, manager I, Engineering; Andrew Tuberville, maintenance technician; and Zach Campbell, maintenance technician. Corporate Vice President and Renal President Bruce McGillivray attended the competition in Atlanta, and came away impressed. "The atmosphere in the Georgia Dome was amazing, with 17,000 people cheering, and the robot did some incredible things. I am so proud of the team, they worked so hard. One of the parents – a vice president of a bank in Mountain Home – came up to me and expressed the community's appreciation for everything our employees have done, which was great to hear. The effort involved really speaks to the dedication and commitment of our employees and the student designers." Baxter Mountain home employees have supported FIRST activities since 1996. In addition to building the robot, the team submitted a series of entries to FIRST, including AutoCad (2-D and 3-D design and drafting) inventor designs, an AutoCad 3-D animation video, web site design and a complete business plan. They also designed and manned a display for the FIRST Hall of Fame walk in Atlanta. The Baxter Bomb Squad is one of 14 teams in the FIRST Hall of Fame. Bomb Squad team members shared the FIRST experience with a group of students from Auckland, New Zealand who are interested in starting a FIRST organization. They also supported a team from Israel, operating and repairing its robot, sinc the team could not compete when the final day of competition fell during Passover. The team also met with Dean Kamen, entrepreneur, inventor, and founder of FIRST. Speakers at the championship included former President George H. W. Bush discussing the importance of science and technology. Mountain Home's 120-pound, three-wheeled robot (carrying red ball) was one of the fastest in the competition, moving at 12 feet per second. Dodging other robots as they go, competing machines score points by lapping the track and knocking their rivals' "trackballs" off overpasses.