History & Robots

Inspired by a Seattle FIRST® competition, Tom and Cathy Saxton founded the Issaquah Robotics Society at Issaquah High School in 2003, with our first season of competition in 2004. The Saxtons played a critical role in establishing FIRST at Issaquah: leading technical mentoring, recruiting mentors, monetarily supporting the team, obtaining additional funding, overseeing financing, managing paperwork, acquiring space, and procuring tools and materials. In 2004, long-time mentor Jim Troy joined the team.

Upon their departure in 2007, the Saxtons transferred leadership of the team to the students. The IRS faced dissolution from lack of funding, but students and parents rallied to find a new faculty mentor, develop an organizational structure, and raise funding. In tenuous circumstances, we extended our outreach to several Washington State legislators, discussing ways to spread and support STEM objectives through FIRST. In 2008, we traveled to Olympia to testify at a legislative hearing. Impressed, the legislature granted $150,000 in funding for FLL, FTC and rookie FRC teams throughout Washington State. The subsequent season, the number of FRC teams in Washington more than quadrupled, and hundreds of new FIRST teams have since launched using this annual funding. Although congressional funding targeted new teams, the media exposure of the campaign promoted corporate sponsorship, ensuring viability for the IRS and other local teams.

In 2008, we qualified for the FIRST World Championships for the first time and won our first Chairman’s Award. In 2017, we made it to the Einstein Field, the finals of the World Championships.