The Team History

The Saunders Droid Factory started in the September of 2007. In the beginning, the thought of having a robotics team was not highly supported in our community and the Board of Education with the exception of a few individuals. After reconsidering the idea, this proposal was first put into effect in the Saunders Trades and Technical High School where the project was undertaken by Mr. Jose Nunes, Mr. Curanovic, and Ms. Marji; the electronics teacher, the 12th and 11th grade CID (computer industrial design), and the 10th, 9th, and the software teacher, respectively.

The team started to prosper when the Saunders Droid Factory was taken under control by a student leadership, Joseph Messina. Being the first president of the team, he made the necessary moves to set the standards to maintain order in the club and lead it to its highest position of the time as a Rookie team in the US FIRST organization. During our first build season, the Saunders Droid Factory was fortunate enough to have about 20-30 build team members; many of them skilled in their trades of electronics and in the metal shop at our school. In our first year, our mentors and dedicated members used their skills to their full potential to not only compete in the local regionals but to win all the Rookie first year awards and having the opportunity to make it to Internationals.

This lead to an uprising, the Board of Education started to recognize the opportunities in the program and started to launch this program around the other high schools and many teams were started due the success that we had during our first year. During our second year in robotics, our team almost doubled in size after students witnessed the opportunities, the technology, the resources, learning experience which lead the Saunders Droid Factory to success. Having the Saunders pride, the team had outdone itself in the second year. Not only our team build a highly competitive robot but the team scout made many strategies that lead the team to win the First Place in New Jersey, Finalists in NYC, and the most prestigious the Chairman’s Award in our second year; giving us once again the opportunity to go to Internationals.

This is our third year and the team doubled once again up to about 80 members now! Many new US FIRST teams have been launched because of the team success and the efforts of the students and mentors to reach for the stars and help those in the community. Being another year of robotics, the Saunders Droid Factory Team 2344 is ready more than ever to face the challenge!