Meet FRC Team 360, The Revolution! Get to know this #TeamREV team from Tacoma, Washington.

Tell us a little bit about your team’s background.

Established in 1999, Team 360 was founded in coordination with the University of Washington and our current school, Bellarmine Preparatory in Tacoma, Washington. We are the longest self-sustaining FIRST team in the Pacific Northwest at 25 years and call ourselves “The Revolution.” 

We have an amusing mascot named Revvy the Revolutionary, who comes alive each year through one of our members. He embodies our excitement and is always a talking point at our competitions. 

Our unconventional robot name, Rainmaker, has a deep yet simple history. During our rookie year, there was a team discussion about what to name our robot. One of our mentors, Kevin Ross, suggested “Rainmaker!” That name has stuck with us ever since, carrying on into the 2024 CRESCENDO season as Rainmaker 24. 

During competitions we have two chants. One of which is “2pi”, which represents 360 degrees in radians. The second is “What place are we in? ….Todai!” which stems from a moment at a Japanese restaurant when someone asked for our competition rank and was answered with our literal location, Todai. This shared confusion about our competition ranking and physical location teaches that it doesn’t matter what place we are in as long as we’re together as a team. 

This year, we are going into our 25th season stronger than ever. Team 360 has over 50 members across seven subteams, majority being in our manufacturing and programming subteams. We continue to inspire young minds, accomplishing our mission by fostering student leadership, developing skills in engineering, and making STEM the most accessible fun to all.

What are a few achievements your team is proud of this season?

On October 25th, 2023, our outreach subteam went to the Pope St. John XXIII STEM Academy to present to elementary school students the opportunities in FIRST beyond middle school. We are so grateful to help establish a sustainable student base and recruit some summer campers for next year! 

On December 2, 2023, we joined local teams at Mount Tahoma High School to attend FRC robot demonstrations, interactive workshops, and talks from industry experts. We advanced our outreach efforts with Team #2557: SOTAbots before hosting our FLL competition at Bellarmine. Thank you to the teams that made this event possible! 

On December 3, 2023, we had the honor of hosting our second FLL qualifier event for hundreds of elementary and middle schoolers in the world of LEGO robotics. We had over twenty members participate in volunteering efforts as queuers, field resetters, concessionaires, and setup/cleanup teams.

What is your favorite part about being in #TeamREV?

Having the ability to collaborate with other REV-sponsored teams has been influential to our sub-team processes and robot design. Being able to ask questions to REV Robotics personnel has significantly helped our productivity, and they helped us resolve several product questions. We look forward to continuing our #TeamREV partnership and hope to see fellow #TeamREV teams in Houston.

What else would you like us to know about your team?

Last year was our first time in 5 years attending the World Championships in Houston. Each sub-team has been working to improve its training, processes, and documentation. We’ve elevated our level of play by utilizing the latest robotics products, like swerve drive and the REV Power Distribution Hub. 

We are already planning our summer robotics camps. Student outreach members are working on a curriculum, game design, and marketing for this yearly fundraiser. We’ve secured a larger space to host camp sessions and are working on funding additional robotics kits to support the expected growth in participation. In 2017 we established an endowment to ensure we have sustainable funding. Since we are a private school, we are not eligible for state STEM grants. Each year we receive a percentage of the investment gains, which funds a portion of our program. Our wonderful business team works on campaigns to grow the base yearly. One day we will reach our goal to become financially secure.

Thanks for celebrating #NationalRoboticsWeek with us, and best of luck at FIRST Championship, Team 360! Find The Revolution on these platforms:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram