Jungle Robotics Team History

Where did our name come from? (Founding Member Hannah Helgesen's Response, 02/17/2023)
 

This is an excellent surprise. I knew the team was still going but it seems like it is in fact going strong!

It gives me goosebumps to see such a high-quality video and newsletter, and I am honestly crying over here seeing that my logo is still being used.

 

The original team name was a bit silly, we called ourselves ERASE, which was an acronym of some kind that I, for the life of me, cannot recall. Maybe something like Engineers Researching And Succeeding Everywhere. It was silly, to say the least. After the first year of competitions, a few members of the team and I went to Busch Gardens to celebrate and we were talking about how all the teams that we looked up to had a kind of, theme, or element to go with them. Half-jokingly, I said, I wonder if there is a team that uses the rainforest or jungle as a theme. Could be fun to flesh out the sort of, tropical side of being in Florida in a robotics setting. My dad loved the idea and changed my mind from rainforest to Jungle, and it stuck so I checked the team register to make sure.

 

It wasn’t taken, so we changed the name and began dreaming of having trees and floral tents in the building area, some kind of animal mascot, and a wave of deep green shirts to fill the arena. We painted our faces and designed the new logo that you seem to still be using today.

 

Such good memories.