From the archive
Memories
Stories from FIRST® in Texas — the volunteers, teams and students
who built the seasons before this one.
For sixteen years the programs in this state were run by FIRST® in Texas, an independent organization of staff, contractors and a great many volunteers. In 2026 that work came back inside FIRST itself, as FIRST Texas. The people did not change. The seasons did not change. But the website that carried the record of them is being switched off.
These 51 stories were on it. They are spotlights, mostly — a volunteer who has judged for a decade, a team that found a way to pay for its season, a student explaining what a robot taught them, an alum describing where it led. Between them they cover 2014 to 2026, which is longer than the old site itself admitted: its final move stamped most of these with the day they were migrated rather than the day they were written.
They were recovered from the Internet Archive and kept here, as close to how they were published as we could manage. Nobody wrote them for a history page. They read better for it.
Some of this is incomplete, and you can help.
Every story now carries the date it was actually published, from 2014 to 2026, and only 20 of the 57 photographs these stories referenced were ever captured by the archive. The rest exist now only in somebody’s own files. If you know when a story happened, who is in a picture, or you have a photograph of your own from that day, the button on any card will take it — no account, one box. Everything is checked by the team before it appears.
2 of 51 in teams from 2026.
Teams
Seasons, builds and the odd miracle · 2
March 2026Team Spotlight: FRC Team 457 Grease MonkeysTeam 457 Grease Monkeys is the oldest team in San Antonio and the fifth oldest active team in Texas! Now celebrating their 25th season, the Grease Monkeys are marking the milestone during a year that feels especially fitting. A season of rebuilding, rebranding, and redefining who they are.
January 2026Team Spotlight: FTC Team 11719 Iron HookFTC Team 11719 Iron Hook is a West Texas team that is more than just robots and matches. It is a family that grows together through shared challenges and opportunities, continually refining their design and pushing themselves to be the best each season. Each year gives the team a chance to reconnect
Recovered from the Internet Archive, September 2026. Dates come from the original site’s own files and from the photographs’ capture dates where those survived; where neither did, the story says so rather than guessing.