New Year, New Team!

The 2009-2010 school year is looking up for MorTorq, our robotics team! Although we will miss our seniors, who have gone off to college, we have acquired a multitude of promising new members eager to make a difference in the team.

Jason Kahn, Shoshana Young and Nicole Weinstein were in charge of promoting our club at Freshmen Orientation. Their presentation was a success, and they were able to stimulate over fifty freshmen's interest in Robotics. The popularity of the program is soaring with all opened spots filled even before Club Week sign-ups. Interestingly enough, many of these new recruits are girls, nearly balancing the gender make-up of MorTorq to about a fifty-fifty boy to girl ratio.

In addition to the expansion of the team, MorTorq accepted a generous donation from the Regional Occupational Program to finance the program. Our team is also looking for new sponsors and new means of fundraising.

Facilities are also expanding with the Woodshop now available as a new workspace for the building team. Mentors like Mike Gordon and Roy McKee have returned to assist us in training workshops.

The team is also taking a new direction with its charity program. This year, we are building a partnership with the Ronald McDonald House Organization, a program that provides charity housing for families with children who have been diagnosed with cancer or other serious illnesses and who do not live within the proximity of a children's hospital. Our job is to collect the pop-tops of soda cans for recycling, cash them in, and give all the profits to the organization. "We are very excited about this program," said Nicole Weinstein, our co-President, and "we are hoping to make this [the program] school- wide and perhaps even district-wide."

This is a new year and a new team and MorTorq is on its way to another successful year. Countdown to L.A. Regionals Competition on March 25th, 2010: 181 days.