OUR ENGINEERING PROGRAM

With the 2024-25 season bringing a change in coaches, that raised the questions: How many coaches had there been at Lovejoy for Robotics? When did Lovejoy Robotics start? Below is a brief history of Lovejoy Robotics as best I have been able to dig up from various records. “The Early Years – Coach Lidington – 2008-2019” Lovejoy Robotics was started by Coach Brian Lidington in the 2008-09 season, which was VEX’s 2nd season of VRC competition and the 2nd year of Lovejoy High School. “LHS Extreme Engineering Club” was officially formed on Feb 21st, 2009. In that very first season, Coach Lidington drove out to meet with VEX in Greenville to learn about how to host a tournament and he proceeded to organize and host the first Lovejoy Tournament in the main gym with 12 teams competing and 20 volunteers. Lovejoy had 2 teams that first year and one of them qualified for and competed at World’s in Dallas (KBHCC). Lovejoy again hosted a tournament the next season with 31 teams and they again qualified and competed at World’s in Dallas. The following season, Lovejoy decided to stop hosting tournaments and focus on the teams competing. The remaining seasons with Coach Lidington had between 2 – 4 teams competing, with between 10-18 students each year. They would attend between 2-6 tournaments, and typically won a couple of awards each season, most often Tournament Champions, but once Skills Champion and once Excellence, and a couple of judged awards along the way. Starting in 2013, the first female student signed up, and by 2017, a third of the students were female. 1082B did qualify for and competed at World’s in Louisville KY in 2016. Unfortunately, the booster club dissolved after the 2016 season and lay dormant for 3 years. During these years, VEX had been maturing, incorporating changes that make it look like what we are familiar with today: Introducing the Code of Conduct; Changing from 3-team to 2-team alliances for elims; using red & blue license plates instead of alliance flags; Removing Coaches from the drive team; Adding Student Centered Program rules; and introducing the V5 line of robotics hardware. “The Growth Years – Coach Strickland – 2019-2024” In the fall of 2019, Coach Josh Strickland was hired to be the new robotics coach. He came in with zero previous VEX experience and credits his students for educating him in VRC. He was a very enthusiastic and energetic coach, fielding 6 teams with 35 students in his first year - almost double the previous high. This also included the first ever all female team. He also put a focus on notebooks and interviews and his teams immediately started winning judged awards, earning 7 judged awards that first year (out of 18 total awards). Each year he took at least 3 teams to Regional’s, peaking at 10 teams in 2024! And each year teams took home at least 1 award from Regional’s, up to 6 two different years. He had at least 1 team qualify for World’s each year, with 7 qualifying two different years; in 2020 a team finished 8th in Quals at World’s and made semi-finals (1082B) and in 2023 a team earned Lovejoy’s first ever World’s Divisional Award (Think – 1082X). Also in the fall of 2019 Tania Vaughn, a teacher and parent, took the initiative to restart the booster club and also succeeded in getting it included again in LLI to have 501(c)(3) status. The booster club would play a very pivotal role in supporting the ever growing robotics program each year going forward. Coach Strickland continued to increase students and team count until he hit 14 teams with 120 students in 2022. Finding that was too many teams to manage, he had to cap the number of teams and start holding tryouts. He also introduced the EIT (Engineers In Training) as non-competitive teams to allow new students to develop their robotics skills. He also started taking 1-2 teams to a Signature event, which was expanded to 4 teams traveling in 2023. The Booster Club remained very active, supporting the Coach in many ways to help manage the large number of teams. In order fund the expanding program, the Booster Club successfully solicited corporate sponsors. Each year, Coach Strickland’s teams earned an increasing number of awards until in 2023-24 10 teams attending 12 events earned 45 local awards and won 5A UIL for the first time. In Jan of 2021, Coach Strickland decided it was time for Lovejoy to host a tournament again. He held a meeting to recruit parent volunteers and “For the Love of Bots” was born. Five years and eight tournaments later FTLOB is still going strong. This tournament has hosted as many as 57 teams, but has settled into 48 teams and requires around 80 volunteers. The Booster Club played a key role in helping run FTLOB, with Christy Forte’ taking on the role of Tournament Director in 2022 for 3 seasons. Eric Schnurr became a certified Head Ref and has served as such at every FTLOB, and also ref’d at World’s for two years. Trish Cook is the most recent Judge Advisor for FTLOB, and she has worked very hard to recruit many judges needed for a tournament from non-Lovejoy sources like tech companies, and has also judged at Worlds and multiple Signature events. Coach Strickland also initiated several other activities to help robotics students grow and give back to the community. The first was establishing a summer robotics camp, usually in early June where kids from 1st to 8th grade could participate in a week-long day camp to learn about robotics. Current High School students plan the activities, which includes creating the game in which the campers can compete their newly built robots. At the end of the 2022 school year, Coach Strickland also started a local chapter of International Robotics Honor Society (IRHS), a program managed by RECF. Robotics students in 10th grade and higher can to be part of this selective organization. The IRHS officers plan various activities throughout the year, now including the summer robotics camp. In Jan of 2023, Lovejoy won the “International Robotics Honor Society Service Award” as part of the 2023 online challenges that RECF hosts each year. “ Current Year – Coach Sparrow – 2024- ” Over the summer of 2024, Coach Sparrow was announced the third Robotics Coach for Lovejoy High School. Like Coach Strickland, he had zero prior knowledge of VRC coming in, so he drank from a firehose all season long. Booster Club President Christy Forte’ put forth tremendous effort making sure things didn’t miss a beat throughout the season while Coach Sparrow was getting up to speed. Eight teams were created for the season, plus two EIT teams, in an effort to make things more manageable. Due to RECF’s new registration rules, Lovejoy was only able to attend 6 local events, half that of recent seasons. However, the Varsity teams successfully completed at Signature Events in both Massachusetts and Ohio. Lovejoy teams had a very successful season competing and we are excited to see what the future holds. Current Lovejoy Robotics ‘Streaks’ as of May 2025 * 16th year competing in VEX Robotics Competitions * 9th year having at least 1 team at Regional’s * 6th year winning at least 1 award at Regional’s * 6th year having at least 1 team at World’s * 5th year competing at UIL * 5th year hosting at least 1 tournament (8 total counting Regional’s) * 4th year winning at least 1 award at a Signature event * 4th year with at least 1 team making Elim’s at World’s * 2nd year as 5A UIL State Champions