He swam competitively at the national level for six years out of the Mississauga Aquatics Club, but Andrew George’s real love has always been engineering – and building robots.

Now, the Oakville resident is hoping to mentor other students to enjoy his passion as part of the newly-formed Oakville Community FIRST Robotics Team.

Just launched, the team is now accepting membership applications and will start in September at Sheridan College, training and eventually building a robot for one of several competitions organizers expect to enter.

“The goal of the organization is to get students to view robotics and engineering as a sport,” said George, 19, who just finished first year of mechanical engineering at McMaster University. “If Michael Jordan can get students to bounce a basketball for eight hours a day, maybe this program can get students to do their math homework and one day become an engineer.”

George and his best friend Cameron Swinoga, also 19, both previously went to Oakville Trafalgar High School where they spent four years with the Red Devils Robotics Team. The school, one of Halton’s most active for Robotics, has run teams for the past 14 years.

But not every high school in Halton, or Peel for that matter, has enough students interested to form their own team. So a group of volunteers and mentors of the Oakville Trafalgar team decided it was time to organize one of their own. They approached Sheridan College and a partnership with its Skills Training Centre program was born. http://oakvillefirstrobotics.org

The timing was also perfect. With some local public school teachers involved in work-to-rule campaigns, teachers may not always be able to run robotics programs after school.

“Two years ago Sheridan also opened its doors for us when there was another work-to-rule situation,” said Peter Lowes, one of the mentors and organizers of the new team. “A lot of schools in south Halton and south Peel don’t have their own teams so we see this as an opportunity for interested students to have another avenue.”

The new team is separate and independent from school teams, Lowes said.

“Eventually, if we get four students from one school during the first year and they interest their friends to join for the second year then we will recommend to their school that they have enough students interested now to start their own team if there is a teacher interested as well,” Lowes said. “Our goal is to promote and inspire respect for STEM (science, technology, engineering and skilled trades, and mathematics) in our communities.”