Late '90s
North High School was originally part of Team 164 in 1998, consisting of Lawndale and Leuzinger High Schools in Lawndale, CA, and what would soon be 294 and 207.
2003
Team 1197 started in 2003 when Michael Ellena, a wood shop teacher, announced the idea of a robotics team to his students. Thus, the South High School robotics team was born. Although many liked the idea of a robotics competition, few were committed to building the robot.
The 2003 team built their Stack Attack robot in an abandoned Japanese restaurant. The team won first place at the Los Angeles area scrimmage competition. This was the first time that a rookie team had ever won this competition. The team's strategy was to play defense and knock down others' stacks. Problems that occurred during the Southern California Regional left the rookie team disappointed.
Robot Name: Sparky
Game: Stack Attack
Team Present: Chris Wilhelm
2004
Most of the 2003 team had left, while many new members joined. The team worked in a small room at NextGen Aeronautics. Initially, the robot was 20 pounds overweight. At the regional in Los Angeles, the team ended up as 3rd seed out of 57, and were Regional Finalists with teams 330 (Beach Bots) and 22 (HOMER).
The robot was capable of picking up balls and was one of few that could hang on the chin-up bar in the middle of the playing field for bonus points.
Robot Name: Sparky II
Game: FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar
Team President: Cameron Esfahani
2005
The programming team had graduated, leaving the rest of the team without a programmer. The year began in the garage of Alec and Scott Dee. The robot this year had an efficient lifting system. During the regional, the team was off to a slow start once the matches began. With poorly equipped alliance partners in each match, we were at a disadvantage until the autonomous mode was fully developed.
The robot was able to pick up "tetras," which were tall pyramids (tetrahedrons) made of PVC pipe.
Robot Name: Sparky III
Game: Triple Play (Objective: stack tetras on nine goals scattered around the field)
Team President: Andy Ferrara
2006
In 2006, the South High School Robotics team expanded and assumed the name "TorBots" to better reflect their new approach to become all-inclusive of the four Torrance high schools (South High School, North High School, West High School, and Torrance High School). The game, Aim High, proved to be rough to the team, who left the regional empty-handed and in 34th place out of 50 teams.
Robot Name: Sparky IV
Game: Aim High (Objective: shoot Poof balls into goals both above and below the arena)
Team Presidents: Mark Donatz, Cory Moore
Bonus!
Despite having roots in the FIRST program going back to the 1990s, we were not the only team from Torrance. Team 848 (Rolling Hills Prep, still active and quarterfinalist at the '09 L.A. Regional - now in San Pedro) and Team 851 (Jubilee Torrance Academy, now disbanded) also hail from Torrance. Neither of the teams have websites.
