Looking back on Exit 5 Robotics’ 2017 year, it was quite the year, full of challenge, achievement, learning, and competition. New was the common theme for the year with new countries visited, new faces added, and new friends from new teams. 2017 kicked off with January and February competitions capturing Judges Awards and Build Awards at our VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) qualifiers. April saw us come within a few screw threads of a trophy at the CREATE US Open 1v1 competition, sliding in at 3rd place with an axle collar breaking loose in the middle of the match. It was a nice cap to the VRC season to make the US Open finals alliances and also be one of the few teams doing high lift score. In May, we had our annual outreach at the LRC Jr. FLL Expo running our VRC robot to fun filled exhaustion. Early summer was time to have our year end party, seeing off 5 long time seniors into engineering programs at Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT, while at the same time bringing on 4 new team members. Jul, Aug, Sep, and Nov had 3 members of the team competing in World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Senior Regular Category at 4 different events, NJ Qualifier, Beijing Robocom Exhibition, US Nationals, and Costa Rica World Championships, respectively. In Oct/Nov, we embraced the Girl Powered Challenge, and helped get an all-girls VEX IQ (VIQ) team started. Closing out 2017, the hard work of the new team members and knowledge of returning veterans helped net the Think Award and Design Award at their Nov and Dec qualifiers for the 2017/2018 VRC season. Looking forward to another great year in 2018!