Who We Are

(and How We Came to Be)

In 2001, an 8^th grade student by the name of Matt Sherry was doing contract work with his dad at the house of Marcee Coonrod. While working he made a comment about liking robots. Marcee then mentioned she was a volunteer at the FIRST St. Louis Robotics Regional. They got into a discussion that led to Matt becoming a volunteer. The next year, Matt’s dad talked his neighbor, a retired Boeing engineer, into helping Matt create a robotics team while Matt talked to his metals teacher. Thus, RCR was born.

Recently, RCR has come to mentor many FIRST Lego League teams. In doing so, the River City Robots has become a non-profit organization, its main objective to help support the many teams. With in the past couple of months, the board of directors has decided to allow each team their own identity to separate themselves from each other. Our new name has become the Channel Cats, a fish native to Missouri waters and RCR has become our major sponsor.

Our 15 students and 12 mentors (approximately) were recruited through strange coincidences, many interconnections, friendships, teacher/student relationships, and co-worker connections. We now have high school students from Fort Zumwalt North, West, and South, Hope, Orchard Farm's, St. Dominic’s, Washington High, and several home schooled students. Our mentors range from engineers to electricians to computer programmers. We do not have mentors for every needed field so even the mentors are learning along with the students. 

The team’s main objective is to get the students to learn something they can create a career off of, even if they are not looking to enter said field. They can learn about pneumatics, engineering, programming, creating a high class website, electronics, and many other necessary forms of technical science. The job of the mentor is to teach the students. During the off season, the mentors have from the end of their last competition to the kick-off to teach the students of the team as much as the can in technological areas needed to create a working robot. This is the essence of FIRST.

The Students

The Mentors

The Robots