McKinney's community robotics team, Mercenary Robotics, needs financial help to continue competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition and to continue providing outreach and support to kids in our community who want to learn about science and technology.



What is the FIRST Robotics Competition and why is it so important to these high school students? Watch the video below for a brief explanation.

Who We Are: We are a group of high school students and adult mentors from Mckinney, Texas and this is our third year competing in the FIRST robotics competition! We were born from a need to provide robotics and STEM to the community at large, and over the time we have been here we have done just that. In our Rookie year we qualified for the World Championships in Houston, and we partnered with the public library and local schools to promote STEM education, expand and teach elementary and middle school coding clubs, and build a budding STEM community in our growing city. More than just a competition team, our goal is to educate students on what it means to be an engineer and prepare them for whatever career they wish to pursue



How We Got Here: Our story started when our city's school district decided to create a wonderful robotics and engineering program to promote STEM and provide greater opportunities for its students. As part of this initiative, a robotics team was started at each of the high schools and many robotics and engineering oriented classes were added to the middle and high school course options. Fast forward a few years, and due to the high costs and other logistical issues the district decided to terminate the FIRST robotics teams. Parents and students in the community decided to take it upon themselves to continue providing this much-needed experience. And so, Team 6369 Mercenary Robotics was formed. Through many trials ranging from low budgets to working out of a garage, this team has carved an important place for itself in our community. In our rookie year, FIRST recognized our community outreach and contributions at the Brazos Valley Regional competition by awarding us the Rookie All-Star Award, which recognizes the rookie team that best exemplifies FIRST's mission and sends that team to the World Championship. Since then, we have secured a permanent build space thanks to the generosity of Collin County Habitat for Humanity and have continued to expand our program.



What We Need: Since we are not a school team, we have to raise all of our funding on our own. We have a lot planned to continue growing and establishing a name for ourselves in the community. The funds raised here will be used for day-to-day operations of the team, purchasing materials for robots, for projects in the community such as Lego robotics camps at the local library, starting Lego robotics teams at local elementary schools, starting FIRST Tech Challenge teams at local middle schools, competition entrance fees, and doing demonstrations and presentations all around town.



We are a 501(c)(3) organization, and if you would like to directly sponsor us you can contact us at [email redacted]



Check us out on Facebook or on Twitter @McKinneyMercs6369, and if you can't contribute monetarily then you can still help us out by sharing our story with your friends and on various social media!