Team History and Core Values

Texas Friendly:  Texas Friendly guides our team culture and dynamic towards others. While still driven to succeed, we strive first for a relaxed and supportive environment that makes everyone feel like they can try new things or contribute their ideas. We value our relationships above winning. We emphasize helping other teams whenever we can and being a good team player within our alliance and with our opponents.

Forging Deep Connections: Working with others and keeping good relationships is something we as a team value as a part of competitions. We believe that the key to succeeding in our mission is by working with others, and the key to advancing society is by offering support to help others achieve their mission along the way. We do this by creating new relationships with rookie teams that are in need of help, keeping up with other teams through friendly conversation on social media, and staying connected with our current friends.

Apprenticeship: With the Howdy Bots, we believe in being a student-driven organization, with a focus on developing “real-world” skills. Our mentors provide training and guidance as needed, but ultimately the students are performing all of the brainstorming, designing, and building of the robot, with the newest students actively participating at all times. As we gain more experience as an organization, our senior students will also play a larger role in helping train and support the junior team members, which in turn will help give them opportunities to develop valuable leadership skills.

Whole Ranch Operation: We value our smaller team that gives members the ability to “wear many hats”, and freely move across our sub-teams, even during the season. Our entire team participates in game strategy and brainstorming robot mechanisms. Members of our mechanical team have worked on our awards, and business team members have helped with CAD and robot fabrication. This gives students a broader range of learning experiences, and helps make us a better team by ensuring that students bring their variety of strengths and perspectives to each activity. The Whole Ranch Operation is also about prioritizing the business and creative aspects of the Howdy Bots, not just the building of the robot. Despite our small team size, our team brainstorms unique fundraising campaigns, produces custom pit decorations and banners, and runs an active social media presence.